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BOOKS 

BY GERTRUDE L. STONE AND 
M. GRACE FICKETT 



EVERY DAY LIFE IN THE COLONIES 

DAYS AND DEEDS A HUNDRED 
YEARS AGO 

FAMOUS DAYS IN THE CENTURY OF 
INVENTION 



D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS 



FAMOUS DAYS IN THE 
CENTURY OF INVENTION 



BY . A ^ 



GERTRUDE V. STONE 

INSTRUCTOR IN THE STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
GORHAM, MAINE 



AND 



M. GRACE FICKETT 

INSTRUCTOR IN STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 
WESTFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS 



D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS 

BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO 




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Copyright, 1920, 
By D. C. Heath & Co. 



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CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I How THE Sewing Machine Won Favor ... i 

II LONG-DlSTANCE TALKING ./ 30 

III A New Era in Lighting 48 

IV The Triumph of Goodyear 67 

V The Easier Way of Printing 92 

VI Anna Holman's Daguerreotype in 

VII The Story of the Reaper 124 

VIII Grandma's Introduction to Electric Cars . . 138 



FAMOUS DAYS IN THE 
CENTURY OF INVENTION 

HOW THE SEWING MACHINE 
WON FAVOR 

PART I 

''It is! It is!" chattered the robins at half past 
three on an early June morning in 1845. Jonathan 
Wheeler sat up in bed with a start. This was the 
morning he had been waiting for all the spring, 
the morning he was to start for Boston with his 
father, mother, and Uncle William, and ride for 
the first time on a railway train. 

Is it really pleasant?" was his first thought. 

It is! It is!" chirped the robins again. And 
Jonathan's eyes by this time were open enough 
to see the red glow through the eastern window. 
In a second he was out of bed, hurrying into his 
best clothes that his mother had laid out for him 
the night before. 

Jonathan lived in a little town only thirty miles 



.u 



2 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

from Boston; but traveling was not then the easy 
and famiUar experience of to-day. The nearest 
railway station was at South Acton, fifteen miles 
away. The Wheelers had planned to start from 
home in the early morning, and after dining with 
some friends in the railroad town, leave there for 
Boston on the afternoon train. 

But in those days the Fitchburg railroad had 
not crossed the river, and had its terminal at 
Charlestown. From there passengers were carried 
by stage to the City Tavern in Brattle Street. It 
would be six o'clock that night before Jonathan 
could possibly see Boston. 

But he lost no moment of his longed-for day. 
The bothersome dressing and eating were soon over; 
and Jonathan felt that his new experiences were 
really beginning when, at seven o'clock, from the 
front seat beside his father in the blue wagon, he 
looked down on his eight less fortunate brothers 
and sisters and several neighbors' children, who, 
with the hired man, were waiting to see the travelers 
depart. 

"Good-bye! Good-bye, everybody!" called Jona- 
than, proudly. "I shan't see you for three days, 
and then I shall be wearing some store clothes!" 

For the first few miles the conversation of his 
elders did not interest him much. He was so busy 
watching for the first signs of a railway train that 



THE SEWING MACHINE 3 

the smoke from every far-away chimney attracted 
his attention; but after a while, when there was 
nothing to see but the thick growths of birch and 
maple each side the road, he heard his father say- 
ing: 

''Well, Betsey, I think thee has earned this 
holiday. Thee has had a busy spring." 

"It has been a busy time," agreed Mrs. Wheeler. 




An Old-fashioned Train or Cars 

"But all the house-cleaning is done and every 
stitch of the spring sewing. Since April I've cut 
and made sixteen dresses and six suits of clothes." 

"Did thee read in the Worcester Spy last week, 
Betsey," inquired Uncle William, "of a sewing 
machine that bids fair to be a success?" 

"A sewing machine!" echoed Mrs. Wheeler. 
"Does thee mean a machine that actually sews as 
a woraan sews? That's too good to be true!" 



4 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

"But it's bound to come, Betsey," said her hus- 
band reassuringly. " We're keeping house to-day 
much as the early settlers did. We've found better 
ways of travel, and labor-saving inventions are the 
next thing." Then, turning to his brother, he 
added, "Tell us, William, what the Spy said." 

"Well, it seems there's a young man in Boston 
who has a good deal of ingenuity, and he actually 
has a sewing machine on exhibition at a tailor's 
there. For some days he's been sewing seams with 
it, the paper said, at the rate of three hundred 
stitches to the minute. Perhaps we shall find that 
tailor's shop to-morrow." 

"I should like nothing better," answered Mrs. 
Wheeler. "Maybe we can buy Jonathan's trousers 
there." := 

Jonathan had been an interested listener to this 
conversation; but just then he caught sight of a 
moving column of smoke, and for the rest of the 
drive he thought of little else but the engine he 
could scarcely wait to see. By ten o'clock came 
South Acton; then the long hours while his elders 
ate slowly and talked much; at last the wonder- 
ful, pufhng, noisy engine and the strange, flat- 
roofed houses on wheels with their many little 
windows. Jonathan's world had grown very large 
indeed when he went to sleep that night at the 
City Tavern in Brattle Street. 



THE SEWING MACHINE 5 

The next morning at the breakfast table, with 
the aid of the Morning Advertiser and the Boston 
Transcript of the night before, the Wheelers made 
their plans for the day's shopping and sight-seeing. 

"We'll do the shopping first," decided Mrs. 
Wheeler. ''Here's an advertisement of ready-made 
clothing." And she read aloud what was, for those 
days, a rather startling advertisement, beginning: 

PERPETUAL FAIR 

AT 

QUINCY HALL 

OVER QUINCY HALL MARKET 
BOSTON 

''Let's go there," advised Uncle William. " Quincy 
Market isn't far from here." So the Wheelers' 
first stopping place that morning was Mr. Sim- 
mons's establishment at Quincy Market. 

"Has thee any linen trousers for this little boy 
to wear with the dark blue jacket he has on?" 
inquired Mrs. Wheeler of the young man who came 
forward to serve them. 

"We have, madam, I am sure." And deftly the 
polite young man picked out a pair of dark blue 
and white striped linen trousers from the middle of 
a neat pile of garments. Sure enough, the trousers 
were of the right size; and, to the Wlieelers' as ton- 



THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 



ishment, the price was less than they had expected 
to pay. 

''There must be some profit, madam, you see," 
explained the clerk; ''but if we could make these 
garments by machine, as a young man in the next 

room says he can, we 
could afford to sell them 
for almost nothing." 

"We have heard of 
that young man and 
his machine. Will it be 
possible for us to watch 
him sew with it?" replied 
Mrs. Wheeler. 

' ' Certainly , madam . 
Just step this way, if 
you please." And he 
ushered the Wheelers into 
an adjoining workshop, well filled with men and 
women, many of the men, as Jonathan found out 
later, being dealers in ready-made clothing in the 
larger towns near Boston. 

"Oh, mother, there he is!" whispered Jonathan 
excitedly, and he hurried forward to see better. 

A kindly-faced young man, not more than twenty- 
five years old, sat at a table before what seemed to 
Jonathan a sort of little engine without wheels. 
With one hand he was turning a crank and with the 




Howe's First Sewing Machine 



THE SEWING MACHINE 7 

other he was guiding a seam on a pair of overalls. 
A bright needle flashed in and out of the blue 
cloth till it reached the end of the seam. Then 
the sewer stopped the machine, cut the thread, 
and handed the garment about for inspection. 

"That took just one minute, Mr. Howe," an- 
nounced a man who stood near, watch in hand. 

''One minute!" echoed a woman standing be- 
side Jonathan. ''I could not sew that seam in 
fifteen minutes." 

''How long would it take thee, mother?" whis- 
pered Jonathan, aside. 

"I'm not sure, little boy," his mother whis- 
pered back. "I think I could do it in ten minutes." 

"An experienced seamstress could not sew that 
seam in less than five minutes," then spoke Mr. 
Howe, as if in answer to a question. 

"I don't quite believe that," objected one man. 

"Well., why not have a race?" challenged Mr. 
Howe. "Mr. Simmons," he continued, address- 
ing the proprietor, "will you let five of your best 
sewers run a race with me? I'll take five seams to 
sew while each of them does one. Are you 
willing?" 

"Agreed!" said Mr. Simmons. And it was but 
the work of a moment to select an umpire and pre- 
pare the seams. Then the umpire gave the com- 
mand to start and the race began. 



8 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

It was an exciting contest. The girls sewed ''as 
fast as they could, much faster than they were in 
the habit of sewing." Mr. Howe worked steadily 
but carefully. 

''If he wins, how many times as fast as each 
girl is he sewing?" asked Jonathan's uncle sud- 
denly, of the little fellow. Jonathan was too bright 
to be caught and answered quickly, "More than 
five, isn't he?" 

"That's right, Jonathan. And he really is sew- 
ing more than five times as fast. Look!" 

It was true. Mr. Howe held up his finished 
seam. Every girl was still at work. "The machine 
has beaten," announced the umpire. "And more- 
over," he added after careful inspection, "the work 
on the machine is the neatest and strongest." 

"Now, gentlemen," said Mr. Howe, "may I 
not have your orders for a sewing machine? See 
what a money-saver it will be ! I can make you one 
for seven hundred dollars. It will pay for itself 
in a few months, and it will last for years." 

Jonathan expected to hear many of the tailors 
present order a machine at once. But he was wit- 
nessing, although he did not know it till years 
afterward, "the pain that usually accompanies a 
new idea." The invention which was to make the 
greatest change of the century in the manufactur- 
ing world lay for several years unused and scorned 



THE SEWING MACHINE g 

by the public. The short-sighted tailors over 
Quincy Hall Market made one objection after an- 
other. 

^^It does not make the whole garment." 

'^My journeymen would be furious." 

** Truly, it would beggar all handsewers." 




Faneuil Hall, Boston, Adjoining Quincy Market 

" The Cradle of Liberty." 



''We are doing well enough as we are." 

"It costs too much." 

"Why, Mr. Howe, I should need ten machines. 
I should never get my money back." 

Jonathan was sorry for Mr. Howe. "I'll buy a 
machine some day," he announced. 



10 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

''Thank you, little boy," answered Mr. Howe. 
'•I've no doubt you will." 

But the tailors laughed and shook their heads. 

Before they left the workshop, Jonathan's party 
had a long talk with Mr. Howe. 

"We are from the country," they said, "with 
no money to buy a machine of this sort. But we 
are interested in it, and we believe it has a future. 
Will thee tell us more about it?" 

"Gladly," said Mr. Howe. "I've been at work 
on the machine most of the time for the last five 
years — ever since I was twenty-one, in fact. I 
was born up in Worcester County, in Spencer. 
When I was eleven, I was bound out to a farmer, 
but I liked machinery better. I went to Lowell 
as soon as my parents were willing, and worked a 
while in a cotton mill. But I did not like that very 
well, it was so monotonous, and I came down here 
to work for Mr. Davis in Cornhill. One day a 
man who was trying to construct a knitting ma- 
chine came in to see if Mr. Davis could make him 
a suggestion. But Davis really made the sugges- 
tion to me. 'Why don't you make a sewing ma- 
chine?' he asked. 

"'I wish I . could,' the man answered, 'but it 
can't be done. ' 

'"Oh, yes,' cried Davis, 'I could make one 
myself. ' 



THE SEWING MACHINE 



II 




Lock Stitch (above) and Chain 
Stitch (below) 



^^'Well,' was the rejoinder, ^you do it, Davis, 
and I'll insure you an independent fortune.' 

''Now I don't know that Davis or the other 
man has thought of the matter since. As for me, 
I've thought of little 
else. A year ago last 
October I had planned 
out the chief parts of 
the machine — the two 
threads, the curved, 
eye-pointed needle, 

and the shuttle. A ^^^ ^°^^ stitch is made with two threads, and 

the chain stitch with one. 

rough model that I 

made convinced me that such a machine would 
work; and last December I prevailed upon my 
friend, Mr. Fisher of Cambridgeport, to let me, 
with my wife and children, live at his house and 
construct my machine in his garret. He gave me 
five hundred dollars besides for material. In re- 
turn for those favors, I've agreed to give Fisher 
half my profits. But," he added rather gloomily, 
''so far it's been a bad bargain for Fisher." 

"Is the machine patented?" inquired Uncle 
Wilham. 

"Not yet," answered Mr. Howe. "I need some 
money first, for, you know, I shall have to make a 
model to deposit at Washington." 

The Wheelers thanked Mr. Howe for his kind- 



12 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

ness in satisfying their curiosity and wished him all 
good fortune. 

''Sometime," added Jonathan's father, "I ex- 
pect thy machine will find its way into homes as 
well as into shops." 

''Indeed, Mr. Howe," added Mrs. Wheeler, 
"it would be the greatest boon the farmer's wife 
could ask." 

"I prophesy, Betsey," said Uncle WiUiam, 
"that before many years thee will make Jona- 
than some overalls with a machine of thine own. 
Meantime," turning to Mr. Howe, "I want to 
buy him the pair thee sewed in the race. They 
were boys' trousers, were they not?" 

"Yes," answered Mr. Howe, "and I'm sure Mr. 
Simmons will be glad to sell them to you. He 
does not put too high a value on them, you know," 
he added soberly. "Anyway, I shall be glad to 
know that my machine has sewed for so engaging 
a little fellow," he finished, with a pleasant smile. 

As for Jonathan, he was almost too excited to 
speak. Two new pairs of "store" trousers in one 
day, and one of these sewed by a machine ! "Thank 
you. Uncle Wilham," he gasped. And he must say 
something to Mr. Howe. "Thank you, too, Mr. 
Howe. I shall surely buy a machine some day." 

Jonathan returned to the country the next day, 
a much traveled little boy for the year 1845. ^^ 



THE SEWING MACHINE 13 

his experiences remained vividly in his memory: 
the wonderful railway train, the stage coach clat- 
tering over the city pavements, the waiter at the 
hotel who stood politely near the table and antici- 
pated his wants — all these recollections made 
his farm life happier and his farm tasks easier. 
Of all his Boston memories, however, none were 
•more vivid or more persistent than the sight of 
that marvelous sewing machine and its exciting 
race with the skilled sewers. 

"What has become of Mr. Howe?" thought 
Jonathan more than once. "Had he given up try- 
ing to persuade people that sewing by hand was 
often a needless drudgery? " For a year and a half 
Jonathan could only wonder. Then, one day in 
February, 1847, Uncle William read in the Boston 
Advertiser that Elias Howe and his brother had 
taken passage in a packet for England to interest 
Londoners in the curious machine that could work 
faster and more skillfully than human fingers. 

PART II 

Three years later Uncle William took Jonathan 
on another journey, this time to a small town west 
of Worcester and about thirty miles from home. 
The trip was made, so Uncle William said, to con- 
sult with a county commissioner there about the 
prospect of a much needed road; but Mrs. Wheeler, 



14 



THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 



when she remembered that Mr. Howe had men- 
tioned Spencer as his birthplace, remarked know- 
ingly to her husband: 

''Not that I would question Brother William's 
motive, but thee knows, Daniel, that he was the 




Jonathan and his Uncle William in the One-horse Chaise 



most interested man in that room over the Quincy 
Hall Market. He may need to see the commis- 
sioner, but I think he's more interested in the for- 
tunes of young Howe." 

"I believe thee's right," answered her husband. 
''And I hope," he added, "that William will come 



THE SEWING MACHINE 15 

back with good news about that young fellow and 
his machine." 

There was no railway train this time for Jona- 
than. It was an interesting journey, nevertheless, 
through a beautiful hill country with varied scen- 
ery. Jonathan and his uncle both enjoyed their 
ride in the comfortable one-horse chaise and their 
dinner at the Worcester inn. In the afternoon they 
drove out to Spencer and put up at the tavern 
there; and after supper they went to bed in the 
very room where President Washington once had 
slept. 

"Now, if I could only see Mr. Howe on the street 
to-morrow morning!" thought Jonathan as he 
dropped asleep. 

Mrs. Wheeler would not have been greatly sur- 
prised at Uncle WiUiam's procedure the next morn- 
ing. The visit to the county commissioner was 
made immediately after breakfast and the infor- 
mation that Uncle WiUiam desired easily and 
quickly obtained. 

"By the way," inquired Uncle William when 
the business interview was over, "do you know 
anything of a young fellow named Elias Howe?" 

"EliasHowe? Why, yes, I believe so. There are 
so many Howes here I had to think a minute. 
You mean Elias, Jr., I guess. They did live down 
in the south part. The young fellow had some 



1 6 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

scheme of sewing by machinery. Couldn't make 
it work, I believe." 

/'Is his father living here?" 

*'No, not now. Another son invented a machine 
for cutting palm leaf into strips for hats and Howe 
moved to Cambridge to help the thing along. Don't 
believe he'll ever come back." 

"My nephew and I saw young Howe in Boston 
four years ago with his sewing machine. We've 
both been much interested to hear more about 
his fortunes. Has he some relatives here who 
could tell us?" 

"Why, yes, his uncle Tyler lives here, his father's 
brother. His house is right over there. Better 
call on him. He's a pleasant fellow — every Howe 
is — and he likes to talk." 

"Shall we?" asked Uncle William of Jonathan. 

Jonathan's feeling in the matter was not uncer- 
tain, but all he said was, "I should like to. Uncle." 

"Glad to see you both," was the hearty greeting 
of Mr. Tyler Howe, upon hearing Uncle William's 
introduction of himself and his nephew. "Well, 
Elias is a smart boy and a good one, but he's pretty 
well down on his luck just now. So you saw him 
in Boston? Four years ago, wasn't it? Since then 
he's had a discouraging time. 

"After he exhibited his machine in the shop 
where you saw him, he spent three or four months 



THE SEWING MACHINE 17 

in Fisher's garret, making another machine to de- 
posit in the patent office. The next year he and 
Fisher went to Washington, where they had no 
trouble in getting a patent, but no luck at all in 
interesting people in the sewing machine. They 
exhibited it once at a fair, but the crowd was 
amused, that's all. 

''By the time Fisher got back to Cambridge, he 
washed his hands of the whole matter. I don't 
much wonder. He'd spent all of two thousand 
dollars and hadn't had a cent in return. Then 
Elias had only his family to turn to. With his 
wife and children he moved to his father's and be- 
gan to plan how to interest England in the inven- 
tion America had rejected. 

''He made a third machine, and with that as a 
sample, his brother Amasa sailed for England in 
October, about a month after Elias came back from 
Washington. For a time it seemed as if the trip 
would be worth while. Amasa showed the machine 
to a William Thomas, who had a shop in Cheapside, 
where he manufactured corsets, umbrellas, carpet 
bags, and shoes. You can see that the sewing of 
such articles must be extremely difficult, and 
Thomas was really interested in the machine. 

"But Amasa, I'm afraid, hasn't proved himself 
much of a business man. He sold Mr. Thomas out- 
right for two hundred fifty pounds sterling (that's 



i8 



THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 



twelve hundred fifty dollars of our money, Jona- 
than) the machine he had brought with him and the 
right to use as many more as were necessary in the 
business." 

"Then the notice in the paper was a mistake. 
So Ehas didn't go to Europe?" inquired Uncle 
WiUiam. 



r ^^1 




Cheapside in London 

"Yes, the notice was true. You see, the man 
Thomas did most of his trade in corsets, and the 
machine was better adapted to sewing overalls 
and shirts. So Thomas agreed to give Elias three 
pounds a week if he would go over to London and 
adapt the machine for use on corsets and other 
stiff material. Thomas also agreed to pay the ex- 
penses of workshop, tools, and material. 



THE SEWING MACHINE ig 

"Amasa came back to America with this news, 
and then he and EHas, with the precious first ma- 
chine, started together for London in February, 
just as the paper said. They had so httle money 
that they had to go in the steerage and cook their 
own food. But in London things went well for a 
time, and Thomas even advanced the money for 
EHas's family to join him. However, the good 
fortune was short-lived. In eight months Ehas 
had adapted his machine to Thomas's requirements, 
and then Thomas ungratefully discharged him for 
good and all. 

''Things were pretty dark for Elias by this time. 
Thomas had agreed, but only by word of mouth, 
to patent the invention in England, and to pay 
Elias three pounds on every machine that was 
sold. There are scoundrels everywhere, I suppose; 
but that Thomas has proved one of the meanest 
men I ever heard of. Sewing machines are fairly 
common in London now, and on every one" of those 
Thomas has realized about ten pounds, but Elias 
hasn't had a shilling. 

"Of course, when Thomas discharged him, he 
had nothing to do but move his family into cheaper 
quarters, borrow a few tools, and begin the con- 
struction of a fourth machine. He could not finish 
it without more money, so he moved his family 
into one very small room and worked as fast as he 



20 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

could. But even then he could not buy food for 
his wife and children and material for his ma- 
chine. There was nothing to do but send his family 
home and work at the machine till he could sell it 
and get his own passage money. 

^'Elias has been in a good many straits for a 
young fellow, but he has a marked gift for making 
friends. At this time he grew to know pretty well 
a coach maker, named Charles Inglis, who unfor- 
tunately was a poor man too, but who often lent 
him what money he could during those evil days, 
and what was better, kept faith in him. 

"The night that Mrs. Howe and the children 
left England, it was so very wet and stormy that 
Mrs. Howe, who was almost in consumption, could 
not walk to the ship. Inglis lent Elias a few shil- 
lings for the cab hire, and Elias promised him some 
clothing in return. The clothing was what the 
washerwoman had brought home that morning, 
but had taken away again, because there was no 
money to pay her. 

''Then came days of pinching poverty for Elias; 
but not quite such unhappy ones, I think, now that 
the wife and children were soon to be with the rela- 
tives in Cambridge. Elias knew that the Howes 
were too proud to let his family starve; and as for 
himself, he would borrow a shilling at a time of 
Inglis and buy beans to cook in his own room. 



THE SEWING MACHINE 



21 



"Finally he finished, the machine. Instead of 
getting the fifty pounds that it was worth, he had 
to sell it for ^yq pounds, and even then for a mere 
promise to pay. Inglis soon managed to get four 
pounds of the money in cash for him, but that 
four pounds was by no means enough to pay 
EHas's debts and buy his passage. There was 
nothing to do but pawn 
his precious first machine 
and the letters-patent. 
That done, he drew his 
baggage on a hand cart 
to a freight vessel, and 
he and Inglis took pas- 
sage in the steerage of 
another ship bound for 
America. 

"Elias reached New 
York last April with half 
a crown in his pocket, but 

he found employment in a machine shop almost at 
once. Then came the sad news that his wife, who 
had been ill when she left England, was dying in 
Cambridge. 

'^Elias had no money for a railroad journey. 
He had to wait friendless, except for Inglis, in a great 
city, wholly despairing of ever seeing his wife again 
and feeling that he had risked everything to gain 




Howie's Improved Sewing 

MACinNE 



22 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

nothing. His father, however, as soon as he knew 
of his destitution, sent him ten dollars, and Elias 
reached Cambridge just in time to speak to his 
wife before she died. He had no clothes, though, 
but his shabby working suit, and could not have 
gone to the funeral if his brother had not lent him 
a coat. 

^'That was the last time I saw Elias, and then I 
should scarcely have known him. By nature, he 
is, you know, a pleasant-faced, happy fellow; but 
then he looked as if he had had a long, painful 
sickness. There wasn't a trace of his old self left. 
And as if he hadn't had trouble enough, word 
arrived before I left Cambridge that the vessel 
to which he had carted his household goods had 
been wrecked off Cape Cod. 

"Most people would have given up, I think, 
under all these trials, but Elias has a good deal of 
the Howe perseverance. He immediately got a 
position in Boston as a journeyman machinist at 
weekly wages." 

"And where is he now?" inquired Uncle WiUiam 
sympathetically. 

"I had a letter from him the other day. Should 
you like to hear it?" 

Taking the answer for granted, Mr. Howe opened 
his desk and took out the letter. Then he read as 
follows: — 



THE SEWING MACHINE 23 

Cambridge, Mass., June 20, 1849 

My dear Uncle, 

You will be interested, I know, in what I have 
to write; and I think you will agree with me that 
I shall yet retrieve all my ill-luck. Any advice 
you may have for me I shall cheerfully receive. 

First look at the enclosed hand bill. 

And Mr. Howe interrupted the reading to pass 

Uncle William and Jonathan a small hand bill 

like this : — 

A GREAT 

CURIOSITY!! 

THE 

YANKEE SEWING MACHINE 

IS NOW 

EXHIBITING 

AT THIS PLACE 
FROM 
8 A.M. TO 5 P.M. 

He then went on with the reading: — 

That was posted about in Ithaca, N. Y., just a 
few weeks after I came back from England. 

Some fellow made a machine from the des- 
cription he heard of mine, and he has been giv- 
ing exhibitions of its work in various places. 
He says his machine can do the work of six 
hands and make a pair of pantaloons in forty 
minutes. And I have no doubt he tells the 
truth. 



24 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

Only, Uncle Tyler, don't you see it's my ma- 
chine and he is infringing on my patent? And 
more than that, right here in Boston machines 
have been built on my model and are in daily 
use. Now I know that I am without resources 
and that I have pretty well exhausted the pa- 
tience of my friends. But surely my claims are 
valid. 

Getting money to push them is the task I 
dread. Still I have already raised a hundred 
dollars to get my machine and letters patent 
out of pawn in London; and I have every hope 
that Mr. Anson Burlingame, who is soon to sail 
for England, will deliver them safely to me in 
the fall. 

The next step is to see if the lawyers can find 
any flaws in my claims. If they can't, the suit 
I propose to bring is already in my favor; and 
I am sanguine enough to believe that the Howe 
sewing machine will yet be a household conven- 
ience. 

Yours respectfully, 
Elias Howe, Jr. 

'^Well," commented Mr. Howe, as he folded the 
letter slowly, ''I didn't know how to answer that. 
He said he wanted advice. I know he wants money 
more, but of course he hates to ask for it. I delib- 
erated a good while; but finally I wrote him that 
if the lawyers gave him assurance that his claims 
were valid, I would advance what money I could 
spare to further his suit." 



THE SEWING MACHINE 



25 



There was silence in the room for a httle while. 
Then Jonathan said earnestly: 

"I wish I had some money to give Mr. Howe. 
Would he take my five dollars, do you think?" 
he asked of the inventor's uncle. 

'^ See, I have it here; and I should be glad to give 
it to him without waiting to hear what the lawyers 
say. Do you think it would be all right to send it, 
Mr. Howe?" he inquired. 

"And may I, Uncle WiUiam?" he added quickly, 
for he had almost taken his uncle's permission for 
granted. 

Uncle WiUiam nod- 
ded; and Mr. Howe 
said, "You may never 
get it back, you know." 

"I think I shall," 
answered Jonathan con- 
fidently. "And anyway 
I want to help Mr. 
Howe." 

"Do you want to 
send it now?" inquired 
Mr. Howe. 

"If you please," re- 
plied Jonathan. 

"Then you may write your letter here, while 
your uncle and I go for a walk." 




Elias Howe 



26 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

Spencer, Mass., 
15th 9th nio.j 1849. 
Mr. Elias Howe, Jr., 

Cambridge, Mass. 

My dear Mr. Howe: — 

Perhaps thee remembers the boy who saw 
thee run a race with thy sewing machine against 
five seamstresses over Quincy Hall Market four 
years ago. Thy uncle told me of the hard time 
thee has had since. I am very sorry. I want 
to buy a sewing machine and I want to help thee. 
I am sending thee five dollars. It is all the 
money I have. I hope thee will use it to win 
thy suit. Sometime when thee sells sewing ma- 
chines, I hope thee will sell me one for my mother 
five dollars less than the usual price. Thee can 
see thee will not have to pay this back for a 
long time, for it will be a good many years 
before I shall have money enough to buy a 
sewing machine. 

Thy friend and well-wisher, 
Jonathan Wheeler 

There is little more to tell of Jonathan's visit to 
Spencer. After dinner that day he started with 
his uncle for Worcester, where they stayed all 
night. The next morning, after an early break- 
fast, they set out again, reaching home before the 
forenoon grew very hot. 



THE SEWING MACHINE 27 

PART III 

Not many days after Jonathan's return, the first 
letter he ever received his father brought him from 
the post office. It hardly needed the post mark, 
Cambridge, to make Jonathan sure who had sent 
it. Let us open it with him : — 

Cambridge, August 26, 1849. 
My dear friend Jonathan, 

Your letter with its inclosure of five dollars 
has been gratefully received. I remember you 
and your uncle, your father and your mother, 
with much pleasure. Ever since I ran that race 
in Boston I have been sure that the machine 
would work its way to success. 

I am more confident now than ever. I have 
found some one who will buy out Mr. Fisher's 
interest; Mr. Burhngame will bring my old ma- 
chine and letters patent from London; and every 
lawyer I have consulted says my claims are valid 
and I shall win my suit. 

When I have succeeded, and the manufacture 
of sewing machines is under my control, I shall 
send for you to pick out a machine for your 
mother. 

Again thanking you for your substantial in- 
terest, I am 

Very faithfully yours, 
Elias Howe, Jr. 



28 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

This was in 1849. ^^^' Howe's darkest days 
were over; but even then success came slowly and 
in rather a strange way. Mr. Howe's chief enemy 
was a Mr. Singer, who built machines and adver- 
tised them with remarkable success. 

''You are infringing my patent," wrote How^e 
to Singer, upon hearing of the latter's activity. 

''But you are not the inventor," repUed Singer. 
"The Chinese have had a sewing machine for ages; 
an Englishman made one in 1790; a Frenchman 
built one in 1830; and what is more to the point, 
in 1832, a man named Walter Hunt, living in New 
York, invented a sewing machine with a shuttle 
stitch Hke yours. I can find Walter Hunt and 
prove my statement." 

Well, Mr. Singer did find Walter Hunt and the 
fragments of his old machine. But "not all the 
king's horses nor all the king's men" could put 
those fragments together again so that the machine 
would sew. For four years, however, the trial in 
the courts continued. But at last, in 1854, when 
Mr. Howe had waited nine years after complet- 
ing his first machine, the Wheelers and many others 
read with great satisfaction in the Worcester Spy: 

"Judge Sprague of Massachusetts has decided 
that the plaintiff's patent is valid and that the de- 
fendant's machine is an infringement. Further, 
there is no evidence in this case that leaves a 



THE SEWING MACHINE 29 

shadow of a doubt that, for all the benefit con- 
ferred upon the pubUc by the introduction of a 
sewing machine, the pubHc are indebted to Mr. 
Howe." 

In 1855, Jonathan, now grown into a tall, manly 
youth of twenty, started with Uncle William on 
another journey, longer and more interesting than 
either had ever taken before. This time they went 
to New York, where they found Mr. Howe at the 
head of a prosperous business; and when they re- 
turned, they brought with them a Howe sewing 
machine of the very latest model, ''a, present from 
the inventor to Mrs. Wheeler, in gratitude for the 
sympathy and encouragement of her family." 



LONG-DISTANCE TALKING 

PART I 

Late one June afternoon Arthur Burton was 
leaning against a table in the eastern gaUery of the 
main hall at the Philadelphia Exposition. It had 
been a wonderful day, but it was past dinner time, 
and he was hot, tired, and hungry. He had seen 
more wonders that day than he had witnessed in 
all his life before; but now his uncle and the other 
judges were in the midst of the Massachusetts 
educational exhibit, which wasn't half so inter- 
esting as the first electric light, or the first grain 
reaper, or the iceboats. So Arthur had moved 
away from the new-fashioned school desks and the 
slate blackboards, and was waiting rather wearily. 

Suddenly he straightened up. Entering the door 
near by was the most distinguished visitor at the 
Centennial, the tall, handsome Dom Pedro, Em- 
peror of Brazil, with the Empress and a bevy of 
courtiers. To Arthur's amazement, His Maj- 
esty walked directly up to the table against which 
he himself was standing; and looking beyond the 

30 



LONG-DISTANCE T.\LKING 



31 



little boy, he said with outstretched hand and a 
pleasant smile: 

"How do you do, Mr. Bell? I am very glad to 
see you and your work." 

Till then Arthur had scarcely noticed a sallow, 
dark-haired young man who had been sitting be- 
hind the httle 
table, nor had he 
paid the sHghtest 
attention to some 
pieces of wood 
and iron with 
wire attached 
lying on the table. 
But now, the 
young man and 
his material had 
become decided^ 
interesting. 

"I remember 
very pleasantly,'' continued Dom Pedro, "my 
visit to your class in Boston University when 
you were teaching deaf mutes to speak by means 
of visible speech. You were working out a new 
method, I remember. I suppose this is apparatus 
that you have devised in that connection." 

"I thank Your Majesty," stammered the sur- 
prised young man, who for a moment had been 




Dom Pedro II 



32 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

at a loss to recall who his royal visitor might be. 
''I shall be delighted to explain my apparatus. But 
it has nothing to do with teaching deaf mutes to 
speak. It is more wonderful than that. It speaks 
itself; that is, it reproduces sounds. It is the im- 
provement on the telegraph that the world has 
awaited for years. 

"You see, I found in my experiments that I 
could transmit spoken words by electric current 
through a telegraph wire so that those words could 
be reproduced by vibrations at the other end 
of the wire. I suppose my invention might be 
called a speaking telegraph." 

By this time all the judges had joined the Em- 
peror's party. Arthur fell back to his uncle's side, 
but he could still hear and see everything. 

''Now, Your Majesty," continued Mr. Bell, 
''if you will press your ear against the lid of this iron 
box, I think in a moment you will have a surprise." 

At these words, Mr. Bell's assistant, who had 
come up to the group during the conversation, 
went to another table several rods away and quite 
out of hearing. The Emperor bent down expect- 
antly. The judges looked rather incredulous, but 
they were all interested. 

"Is the man that went off going to talk over the 
wire so that the Emperor can hear?" whispered 
Arthur to his uncle. 



LONG-DISTANCE TALKING ^3 

'^Mr. Bell says so," was the reply, ''but we shall 



see." 



Suddenly the Emperor gave a start, and a look 
of utter amazement came over his face. 

''It talks! It talks!" he exclaimed excitedly. 

It was quite true. Mr. Hubbard, Mr. Bell's 
assistant, had spoken in a low voice at the other 
end of the wire and his exact words had been re- 
produced. The Emperor's excitement was conta- 
gious. Everybody forgot how hot and hungry 
he was. One after another of the judges listened 
at the magic box to hear Mr. Hubbard or another 
of their number speak into the instrument at the 
other end. 

"Oh, Uncle, do you suppose I can listen too 
after a while?" inquired Arthur, when he could no 
longer keep still. 

Just then Mr. Bell himself interposejd. 

"Now it must be the little boy's turn." 

The grateful little boy was not slow in stooping 
over to the receiver. 

"What does he say, Arthur?" asked his uncle. 

"Why, he says, 'To be or not to be,' whatever 
that means." 

"You don't know your Hamlet very well yet, 
little boy." 

"But I have heard a speaking telegraph, and that 
is better," replied Arthur. 



34 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

By this time Mr. Hubbard was returning with 
the apparatus he had been using at the other end. 
It was time to see how the marvel had been wrought. 

''Now tell us how it works, Mr. Bell," commanded 
Dom Pedro. 

''It is very simple," Mr. Bell explained. "You 
know, of course, that for some years it has been 
possible to transmit articulate speech through India 
rubber tubes and stringed instruments for short 
distances; but I worked, as you see, to transmit 
spoken words by electric current through a tele- 
graph wire. 

"Here on the table before you is the instrument 
I call the transmitter, into which Mr. Hubbard 
spoke. This projecting part is only a mouth- 
piece. Inside is a piece of thin iron attached to a 
membrane, and this piece of iron vibrates when- 
ever one speaks into the transmitter. For you know, 
gentlemen, that if you hold a piece of paper in 
front of your mouth and then sing or talk, the 
paper will vibrate as many times as the air does. 

'^ Now, of course, if I could reproduce those sound 
or air waves at a distance, a person listening would 
hear the same sounds that caused the first vibra- 
tion. I have accomplished that by making and 
breaking an electric current between two pieces of 
sheet iron. My assistant spoke into the cone- 
shaped mouth-piece. At the end of it, as you could 



LONG-DISTANCE TALKING 



35 



see if I took off the cover, is the first thin plate of 
sheet iron. Near that iron, but not touching it, 
is a magnetized piece of iron wound around with a 
coil of wire. 

"This magnet is connected by this wire with an- 
other magnet that also has a coil of wire around 
it. On the other side of the second magnet is the 
other thin plate of sheet iron. This last part makes 
what I call the receiver. It is the part at which you 
listened. It looks, you see, like a metallic pill box 




Bell's Telephone in March, 1876. 

with a flat disc for a cover, fastened down at one side 
and tilted up on another. When you put your ear 
to that, you heard the reproduction of the original 
sound." 

" Marvelous !' ' " Wonderful ! '^ '' Stupendous ! " 
"Incredible!" were some of the exclamations. 

"But, gentlemen," confirmed one of the judges, 
a man named Elisha Gray, "it is perfectly true. I 
myself have an invention of a similar sort, by which 
I can send musical sounds along a telegraph wire." 



36 THE CENTURY OE INVENTION 

There was a moment of amazement and congratu- 
lation for Mr. Gray. Then came a question ad- 
dressed to Mr. Bell. 

^' Could you talk into the iron box and hear at 
the transmitter?" 

''Yes, but not easily. So far I have had to use 
different instruments at each end of the circuit. I 
shall remedy that some day," continued Mr. Bell, 
confidently. 

''I am sure you will," agreed the questioner. 

''We want to see this again, sir," spoke one of 
the group. "May it not be transferred to the 
Judges' Hall?" 

"Certainly, as far as I am concerned," was the 
reply. "Mr. Hubbard will see to that, I am sure. 
I myself must return to Boston to-night." 

"My young friend," now spoke Sir William 
Thomson (who later became Lord Kelvin), perhaps 
the most noted of all the scientists present, "is it 
not possible to arrange for a test with your appara- 
tus over a considerable distance? If so, I shall be 
glad to go to Boston also to witness such an ex- 
periment." 

"I shall be most delighted. Sir William," an- 
swered Bell. "I will make the necessary arrange- 
ments and telegraph you at once." 

After more congratulations for the young inven- 
tor, the group dispersed, the judges going awa}^ 



LONG-DISTANCE TALKING 37 

to the dinner they had for a while forgotten. But 
during the meal and through the evening they talked 
of Httle but the new invention; and Arthur dis- 
tinctly remembers to this day the enthusiastic re- 
mark of Sir William Thomson: "What yesterday 
I should have declared impossible I have to-day 
seen realized. The speaking telegraph is the most 
wonderful thing I have seen in America." 

PART II 

When Arthur went back to his home in one of 
the country towns of Massachusetts, he had many 
things to tell his family and his friends. To him 
the Exposition had been a veritable fairy land. But 
the most wonderful genie there was Electricity, 
and his most remarkable work was the speaking 
telegraph. 

'^And you could really hear through that wire?'' 
questioned more than one incredulous person. 

'^I really could, and as plainly as I hear you," 
insisted Arthur. 

'^Sho, now!" remonstrated a farmer neighbor, 
you only thought you could." 

Well, maybe," commented another, cautiously, 
"but of course there was a hole in the wire that 
you didn't see." 

Arthur's own family were more thoughtful and 
intelligent people. 






38 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

^^I knew," said Grandfather, "that the marvels 
of electricity were not all understood. When I 
was a young man, the telegraph was the greatest 
wonder the world owned. But using that was some- 
how like talking at arm's length; the telephone 
brings your friend almost beside you." 

"To me," said Arthur's mother, "the telephone, 
in comparison with the telegraph, seems like a 
highly finished oil painting. The old invention 
is like a page of black and white print." 

"Why, I have seen Mr. Bell," remembered 
Arthur's older sister, who was studying to be a 
teacher, after she had heard the story. "He came 
to the normal school last year to explain his system 
of teaching deaf mutes to speak." 

The Burtons heard no more of the telephone 
for six months or more; but the next winter, when 
Herbert, the older brother, came home from Tufts 
College to spend a week end, he exclaimed: 

"Well, Arthur, I've talked through a telephone, 
too!" 

"You have!" 

"Where?" 

"Tell us about it!" were the quick replies. 

"Professor Dolbear, the physics instructor, has 
made one in his laboratory. It's a little different 
from Professor Bell's. Your professor, Arthur, 
had a battery, you know, to make the electro-mag- 



LONG-DISTANCE TALKING 39 

net. My professor has a permanent magnet in- 
stead." -^ 

Early in February Herbert came home with 
more news and an invitation: ''Professor Bell is 
going to give a public lecture and exhibition of his 
telephone at Salem next Monday evening. He 
expects to carry on a conversation with people in 
Boston. Want to go back to college with me Mon- 
day morning, Arthur, and go down to Salem in 
the evening?" 

So it happened that on Monday evening, Feb- 
ruary 12, 1877, Arthur and Herbert, with about 
five hundred others, were at Lyceum Hall in Salem. 
It was an eager audience, full of curiosity. 

Upon the platform and well toward the front was 
a small table, on the top of which rested an unim- 
portant-looking covered box. From this box wires 
extended above to the gas fixture and out through 
the hall. At the back of the platform was a black- 
board on a frame, and at the side a young woman, 
an expert telegrapher, who was to help Mr. Bell. 

"Rather an unpromising set of apparatus!" 
Arthur heard a man behind him whisper to his 
neighbor. 

"I'm not expecting much," returned the neigh- 
bor. "They say Professor Bell's going to talk to 
Boston. That's nonsense ! " 

But just then Professor Bell began. He briefly 



40 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

explained the instrument upon the table, which, 
Arthur saw, varied but little from that at Philadel- 
phia. 

'^Only," thought Arthur, "he uses it now as he 
said he should, for transmitting and receiving 
too." 

Then Professor Bell gave a brief account of the 
studies he had made since 1872, when he came to 
Boston to teach speech to deaf mutes. 

"I made up my mind," said he, "that if I could 
make a deaf mute talk, I could make iron talk. 
For two years I worked on the problem, but unsuc- 
cessfully. At last, about two years ago, while a 
friend and I were experimenting daily with a wire 
stretched between my own room at Boston Uni- 
versity and the basement of an adjoining build- 
ing, I spoke into the transmitter, 'Can you hear 
me?' To my surprise and delight the answer 
came at once, 'I can understand you perfectly.' 
To be sure," continued the lecturer, ''the sounds 
were not perfect, but they were intelligible. I 
had transmitted articulate speech. 

"My problem was a long way toward its solu- 
tion. With practically those same instruments, im- 
proved with a year's experimenting, I went to the 
Exposition, where, as you know, I interested many 
people. Since last June Sir William Thomson 
and I have succeeded in talking over a distance of 



LONG-DISTANCE TALKING 41 

about sixty miles. Moreover, I have talked, but not 
so successfully, between New York and Boston, a 
distance of over two hundred miles. To-night I 
expect to establish a connection between this hall 
and my study in Exeter Place in Boston, eighteen 
miles away. My colleague, Professor Watson, is 
there, in company with six other gentlemen." 

Then, in an ordinary tone, as if speaking to some 
one a few feet away. Professor Bell inquired, talking 
into the transmitter: 

"Are you ready, Watson?" 

Evidently Watson was ready, for there came 
from the telephone a noise much like the sound of a 
horn. 

'^That is Watson making and breaking the cir- 
cuit," explained Professor Bell. 

Soon Arthur heard plainly the organ notes of 
"Auld Lang Syne," followed by those of "Yankee 
Doodle." 

"But that's not the human voice," objected 
Arthur's neighbor to his companion. "Musical 
sounds we know can be telegraphed." 

Just then Mr. Bell spoke again into the trans- 
mitter. 

"Watson, will you make us a speech?" 

There came a few seconds of silence. Then, to 
the astonishment of all, a voice issued from the 
telephone. All the five hundred people could 



42 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

hear the sound, and those less than six feet from 
the instrument had Httle difficulty in making out 
the words: 

"Ladies and gentlemen: It gives me great 
pleasure to address you this evening, though I 
am in Boston and you are in Salem." 

"I wonder what those men think now," reflected 
Arthur. 

But the answer was forthcoming. 

''We can no longer doubt. We can only admire 
the sagacity and patience with which Mr. , Bell has 
brought his problem to a successful issue." 

At the conclusion of the lecture many of the audi- 
ence went to the platform to examine the wonder- 
ful box more closely. Arthur and Herbert were of 
the number, you may be sure. 

"Is it all right for me to speak to Mr. Bell, 
Herbert?" whispered Arthur. 

"Certainly, if you don't interrupt." 

Arthur watched his chance. 

"Mr. Bell," he said finally, "you did make the 
receiver into a transmitter, didn't you? I saw you 
at Philadelphia, you know." , 

Mr. Bell's puzzled look wore away. 

"Why," he exclaimed, "you're the boy I saw at 
the Exposition that Sunday afternoon last June, 
aren't you?" Then he added, before turning away 
to answer a question that a man was asking, "Bet- 



LONG-DISTANCE TALKING 43 

ter buy a Boston Globe in the morning. You'll 
find a new triumph for the telephone there." 

Arthur bought his Globe the next morning be- 
fore breakfast. Mr. Bell was right. The paper 
recorded even more successes than the boys had 
witnessed the night before. Its account of the 
evening ended with these words : 

"This special by telephone to the Globe has 
been transmitted in the presence of about twenty, 
who have thus been witnesses to a feat never 
before attempted: that is, the sending of a news- 
paper despatch over the space of eighteen miles 
by the human voice, all this wonder being ac- 
complished in a time not much longer than would 
be consumed in an ordinary conversation be- 
tween two people in the same room." 

Probably no child who reads this story can re- 
member when the telephone was not so common an 
object as a lawn mower or an elevator; but those 
of us who lived through the years when its won- 
ders were slowly developing can never forget our 
strange, almost uncanny feeling when the voice of 
a friend who, we knew, was miles away actually 
came out of a little iron box. 

From that day of the Globe report Arthur watched 
the telephone grow rapidly into public notice. 
Salem people invited Mr. Bell to repeat his lecture; 
leading citizens of Boston, Lowell. Providence, 



44 



THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 



Manchester, and New York within a few weeks 
clamored for demonstrations in their cities. 

By September, 1878, a telephone exchange was 
set up among the business houses of Boston, with 



iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiymiiiiiiigi^UHniiiii^ssainiiiHiniatNM 




Part of a Telephone Exchange. 



about three hundred subscribers. Two years later 
the telephone found its way to the little town 
where Arthur lived, and two instruments were in- 
stalled — one at the railroad station and another 
at the lawyer's ofhce. 



LONG-DISTANCE TALKING 



45 



The next day came the presidential election; 
and in the evening the lawyer's office was filled 
with curious men and boys, eager to see whether 
the telephone would really work or not. Arthur 
and his father were there, of course. But before 
any message came, 
the lawyer had to see 
a client for a few 
minutes. 

^^Here, Arthur, 
you've used a tele- 
phone before. Take 
my place at the re- 
ceiver, will you?" 

There was no need 
to ask. Arthur was 
at the receiver when 
the lawyer's question 
was finished. No 




Alexander Graham Bell in 1900. 



message came for some time; but at last the bell 
rang, and Arthur announced proudly: 
^'He says Florida has gone Republican." 
^^I knew the thing couldn't be trusted," sput- 
tered an old voter then. '^As if the solid South 
were broken! I'll get my news some other way." 
And off he went. 

^' You didn't hear right, I fancy," said the lawyer, 
returning. '^The operator couldn't have said that." 



46 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

"But he did," insisted Arthur. ''I'm sure he 
did." 

''And why not?" quietly asked the school teacher 
from one corner of the room. "He means the town 
of Florida, not the state." 

"Of course," said everybody. 

By 1883, Arthur heard that conversation had 
been carried on between New York and Chicago, 
cities one thousand miles apart. "That is all we 
can hope for," was the general verdict. For a long 
time it seemed true. But when the country had 
been covered by a network of wires, there came an- 
other long-distance triumph. Communication was 
open to Omaha, five hundred miles farther west. 

And not long ago, Arthur, now a prosperous busi- 
ness man of fifty, a member of the City Club of 
Boston, sat with several associates around a table 
at the new club house, each with a telephone in 
front of him; and over the wires, across three 
thousand miles of mountain, lake, and prairie, 
came clearly the voices of the governor of Massa- 
chusetts and the mayor of Boston, speaking from 
the Panama Exposition at San Francisco. 

What will be the next triumph of the telephone? 
To transmit speech around the globe, perhaps. 
Anyway, here is a newspaper paragraph that asks 
an interesting question : 

"The Mayflower has been called the last frail 



LONG-DISTANCE TALKING 47 

link binding the Pilgrims to man and habitable 
earth. With its departure from Plymouth in 
America that frail link was severed. The Atlantic 
cable has surely bound the countries together again. 
Will the telephone and the aeroplane make the 
desert of the Pilgrims a popular London suburb?'' 



A NEW ERA IN LIGHTING 

PART I 

''Uncle John, I've decided to go to Wellesley 
College." 

"I'm glad to hear it, Dora. Have you money 
enough?" 

''That's just the trouble. Uncle John. I have 
exactly twenty-four dollars that I've earned pick- 
ing berries the last three summers. But I'm only 
eleven, you know, and I shan't try to go before 
I'm eighteen. That will give me seven more sum- 
mers to work. Only I can never pay my college 
expenses if I can't earn more than eight dollars a 
summer." 

"That's true, Dora. I wish I were rich enough 
to send you myself. But school teachers are not 
wealthy, you know." 

"Oh, I don't want anybody to give me the 
money, Uncle John. I want to earn it. Don't you 
know of something that's more profitable than 
berry-picking?" 

"I'll think about it, Dora." 

This conversation took place in 1878^ when 

48 



A NEW ERA IN LIGHTING 



49 



Dora's Uncle John, who was a high school princi- 
pal in New Jersey, was spending his Christmas 
vacation at Dora's home in a little village on the 
Maine coast. Nothing more was said about the 
college money then; but when Uncle John came 
again in February, he showed that he had interested 
himself in the ambitious plans of his little niece. 




• Wellesley College in 1886. 

"Dora," he inquired, "do you want to go to col- 
lege as much as ever? " 

"Yes, more, Uncle John. Have you thought of 
anything for me to do this summer?" 

"I know something you can do, Dora, if you 
want to." 

" Oh, Uncle John, what is it? " 
"How should you like to work for me?" 
"I should like to ever so much. But I don't 
know enough yet to correct high school papers. 
All I can do is housework." 



50 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

''And that's just what I want of you, Dora. 
You didn't know I had leased the Atlantic House, 
did you?" 

"No, indeed. Uncle John. Do you mean you're 
coming here summers to manage that hotel?" 

"Yes, for the next ten years, anyway, I expect. 
Do you like to fill lamps and clean chimneys, 
Dora?" 

"Why, that's the part of the housework I can 
do best." 

"That's good. Will you work for me twelve 
weeks this summer for three dollars and a half 
a week?" 

"Oh, Uncle John, of course I will. But isn't 
there gas in that hotel?" 

"No, just kerosene lamps. I know some people 
like gas better, but I don't. It's too dangerous and 
it's bad for one's eyes. So even if I could spare the 
money this summer, I shouldn't pipe the house for 
gas. It can't be many years before there will be 
a cleaner and better light. The Wizard will soon 
attend to that." 

"What do you mean. Uncle? Who is the Wiz- 
ard?" 

"The most wonderful man in America, Dora. 
His name is Thomas Alva Edison, and he lives in 
Menlo Park, New Jersey, not far from where I 
teach. I know him a little. He is the man who, I 



A NEW ERA IN LIGHTING 51 

think, best represents the scientific spirit of the 
nineteenth century. He's an inventor, but a system- 
atic one. He doesn't trust to chance." 

''What has he invented, Uncle? I don't think I 
ever heard of him." 

''I fancy not, Dora. So far his work has been 
largely improvements on inventions already made. 
Just now, as I said, he is experimenting to find a 
way of fighting buildings by electricity. He will 
succeed, I know; and I shall wait for his electric 
fight. I expect, though, to wait a number of years 
yet, for even though he should discover the se- 
cret within a few months, no one can supply the 
necessary apparatus. It will take years, I'm sure, 
before electric lighting is cheap enough to be com- 



mon." 



How did you get acquainted with such a won- 
derful man, Uncle?" 

''I knew him first when I was getting ready for 
college. Like you, I had my own way to pay; 
and I learned to be a telegraph operator. The sum- 
mer before I entered Harvard I had a place in the 
Boston ofiice of the Western Union Telegraph 
Company. Mr. Edison was a young man too, and 
he came to work in the office while I was there. 

"The night he came we tried to play a joke on 
him, but the joke was decidedly on ourselves. 
Edison wore an old linen duster, and looked so 



52 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

much like a country boy that we thought he couldn't 
know much about taking messages. So we arranged 
with a skillful New York operator to send a long 
message faster and faster, and we saw to it that 
the new boy had to take it. To our surprise, he 
proved the fastest operator we had ever known and 
very carelessly and easily handled the quick dots 
and dashes. The joke was on the New York opera- 
tor, too, for after a while Edison signaled, ^Say, 
young man, why don't you change off and send 
with your other foot?' 

^'An operator like that didn't stay long in the 
office. He went to New York, and almost at once 
got a position at three hundred dollars a month 
because he was bright enough to repair a stock- 
indicator in a broker's office. Soon afterward he 
improved the indicator so much that the presi- 
dent of the company gave him forty thousand dol- 
lars for his new idea. 

''Next he proved his value to the telegraph com- 
pany again by locating a break in the wire between 
New York and Albany. The president of the West- 
ern Union had promised to consider any invention 
Edison might make if the young man would find 
the trouble on the line in two days. Edison was 
not two hours in locating the break; and ever 
after that the Western Union people were glad 
enough to be told of all his new ideas." 



A NEW ERA IN LIGHTING 



53 



"Is he working for the Western Union now?" 

''No, not now. Just as soon as he had enough 
money in the bank so that he could afford time to 
experiment, he opened a factory and laboratory of 
his own. He made stock tickers for a while; but 
he cared more about improving them than selling 
them. 'No matter/ I have 
heard him say, 'whether I 
take an egg beater or an 
electric motor into my hand, 
I want to improve it. I'm a 
poor manufacturer, because 
I can't let well enough alone.' 
So, instead of making stock 
indicators, he went to work 
to improve the telegraph. 
He saved the Western Union 
Company millions of dollars 
by making a device for send- 
ing four messages at the 
same time over one wire. So 
you see he made their one hundred thousand miles 
of wire into four hundred thousand without using 
any more wire. That's a wizard's work, I think." 

"I should think so, too," agreed Dora. "That 
seems to me as hard as singing two notes at once." 

"But it can be done, nevertheless; and Edison 
was so pleased with that invention that he put 




Stock Indicator or 
" Ticker " 



54 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

his factory at Newark into the hands of a cap- 
able superintendent and estabhshed a laboratory at 
Menlo Park, where he is now, about twenty-five 
miles from Newark. Then he began to think about 
the telephone. Do you know what that is, Dora?" 

^^I've heard about it, of course, but I never 
saw one. There are some telephones in Portland, 
though.'' 

^'Yes, and there's going to be one here. I'm 
going to connect the hotel with the telegraph of- 
fice at the station this summer, and sometime I'll 
give you a chance to talk over the wire. It's easier 
to use the telephone now than it was at first, for 
in the beginning there was a continual buzzing that 
was very annoying; but Edison has stopped all 
that by improving what we call the transmitter." 

Dora's idea of a telephone was indistinct; but 
she was satisfied with the explanation to come, and 
she wanted to hear more of Mr. Edison. ''Has he 
made anything else?" she asked. 

"Oh, yes," replied Uncle John. ''What I think 
is the most wonderful thing Edison has done is the 
phonograph. Next to the telephone, that to me is 
the [biggest marvel in the world of science. Think, 
Dora, of speaking into a machine that makes a 
picture of the sound waves produced by your 
voice, and then, a day or a year or a century later, 
letting the instrument work backward and hear- 



A NEW ERA IN LIGHTING 55 

ing your own voice exactly as it sounded at first. 
Such a mechanism almost frightens me. It makes 
me sure that if a man Hke Edison can keep the idle 
words men speak through centuries, . the Master 
Mind of this universe can keep them for us 
forever." 

Dora must have caught a little of her uncle's 




^ Edison's First Phonograph. 

thought, for she said, slowly, ''Do you mean that 
everything I say I shall hear again sometime?'' 

^'I don't know exactly, Dora. But I am sure 
that God, who gave you power to speak, knows 
how to keep your words forever; and I am sure 
you will never cease to be glad for all the kind words 
you may speak for human ears to hear. 

''But I'd almost forgotten about the electric 



56 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

light, Dora. Let me tell you what Edison said about 
that the last time I saw him. He told me of seeing 
in Philadelphia what is called an arc lamp — two 
pieces of carbon that electricity has heated white 
hot and that give off a powerful light, much more 
powerful than any gas lamp you ever saw could 
give. But a lamp hke that, though it makes a fine 
street lamp, is not suitable for lighting a house. 
It's too bright and too big. Edison says it needs 
to be subdivided so that it can be distributed to 
houses just as gas is now. 

^'That's Edison's present problem, Dora. He 
is such an untiring worker that I don't believe it 
will take many months; and when the process is 
perfected and the implements for generating the 
electricity can be secured, I mean to make my hotel 
the prettiest place at night on the Maine coast. 
But meantime, Dora, suppose you learn to wipe 
lamps so dry and polish chimneys so bright and 
trim wicks so even that every summer visitor at 
the 'Atlantic' will be glad to get away for a 
while from the flaring, ill-smelling, poisonous gas 
light." 

"I will, Uncle John, I will! I'll be the best lamp- 
trimmer on the whole Maine coast!" 

'' That's the spirit that will take you to college, 
Dora," answered her uncle. ^' Don't lose a bit of 
it." 



NEW ERA IN LIGHTING 57 



PART II 



For all the long hot weeks of the next summer 
Dora worked faithfully every day on the hotel 
lamps. She had to be at her work at eight o'clock 
every morning, and she seldom finished before two 
in the afternoon. But every week her uncle paid 
her three dollars and a half, and by the end of the 
season she had forty-two dollars carefully put away. 
When the hotel closed, her uncle made her a pres- 
ent of eight dollars, so that when she started for 
school in the fall she rejoiced in the thought of fifty 
dollars put away in the savings bank as a college 
fund. 

She was happy, too, in the prospect of making as 
much money the next summer. For the Wizard, 
Uncle John told her, had not the secret yet. He 
had succeeded in making a platinum wire, encased 
in a glass globe, give a light equal to that of twenty- 
five candles without melting. But he needed to 
exhaust all the air from the glass globe, and still 
one one-hundred-thousandth of the original vol- 
ume remained. 

'^But that's not sufficient," commented Uncle 
John. "I know enough about the matter to be sure 
that so much air as that would prevent the plati- 
num from giving out the light it ought to give. 
Still, within a short time, Dora, I expect even the 



58 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

Portland papers will describe Mr. Edison's success 
with the electric light." 

Uncle John's prediction was fulfilled. By the 
first of October the vacuum was so nearly perfect 
that only one-millionth part of the original air was 
left in the glass bulb. By the last of that same 
month, moreover, the whole secret was practically 
in Edison's grasp. He had stopped experimenting 
with platinum for a burner and had gone back to 
carbon, on which he had pinned his faith at first. 

But this time he used the carbon only as a coat- 
ing for a piece of cotton thread that he had bent 
into a loop and sealed up in the almost perfect 
vacuum of glass. When this lamp was connected 
with the battery, it flashed forth with the bright- 
ness that the inventor had so long waited to see. 
But how long would it burn? There was no sleep 
for Edison till that question was answered; and it 
was not answered for forty hours — nearly two 
days of growing delight and diminishing anxiety. 

Such a discovery meant the end of all fruitless 
experimenting. The secret of the incandescent 
light was revealed; and the newspapers all over 
the country — the Daily Eastern Argus of Portland 
among them — spread the knowledge of the great 
event in science and prophesied the speedy con- 
quest of kerosene and gas. Late in November 
Uncle John sent Dora a copy of the Scientific Ameri- 



A NEW ERA IN LIGHTING 59 

can which gave the authoritative account of what 
had been accomphshed. 

'^But/' wrote Uncle John in the letter accompany- 
ing the paper, '^now the real work has only begun. 
The Wizard knows that some carbonized material is 




Edison in his Library. 

what he needs, but he is sure that carbonized cotton 
thread is not the best thing. Now he is carbonizing 
everything he can lay his hands on — straw, tissue 
paper, soft paper, all kinds of cardboard, all kinds of 
threads, fish line, threads rubbed with tarred lamp- 
black, fine threads plaited together in strands, cot- 



6o THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

ton soaked in boiling tar, lamp wick, twine, tar and 
lampblack mixed, and many other materials that 
I can't remember. Why," finished Uncle John, ''so 
far he has examined no fewer than six thousand 
different species of vegetable growth alone. Some- 
body said something to him the other day about 
his wonderful genius. 'Well,' modestly answered 
the great man, mopping his forehead with his hand- 
kerchief, 'genius, I think, is one per cent aspira- 
tion and ninety-nine per cent ^^r spiration. ' " 

In December there came into Dora's Hfe the 
most happy and exciting experience of her child- 
hood. The letter from Uncle John in November 
had ended with this paragraph: 

"I am looking forward to my visit to Maine next 
month, but I'm sorry to say it must be earlier and 
shorter than usual. I have an important engage- 
ment here for the twenty-fourth, and I'm planning 
to reach Maine on Saturday, the twentieth, spend 
Sunday with you, and leave there the twenty- 
second. But I have thought of a way of making 
my visit last longer and of giving you a new kind 
of Christmas present. That way is to take you back 
with me to Jersey and let you see what Christmas 
and New Year's in the neighborhood of New York 
are like. If you approve my new idea for Christ- 
mas, I want you to let me know at once." 

If any twelve-year-old child who lives fifty miles 



A NEW ERA IN LIGHTING 6i 

from a city and has never been farther from home 
than that city in her Hfe is reading this, she will 
know how Dora felt at the prospect of such a 
Christmas journey, and she will understand, too, 
how Dora had her answer ready for the post office 
in less than an hour after she had read her letter. 
The only event of Dora's wonderful vacation that 
this story has a right to tell is her visit to Mr. 
Edison. It happened that in the Herald Uncle 
John bought as the train was nearing New York, 
there was a long article describing the lighting sys- 
tem that Mr. Edison had put into successful opera- 
tion at Menlo Park. ''Interest is getting so great 
in the incandescent light," remarked Uncle John, 
''that I shouldn't wonder if Mr. Edison let the pub- 
lic see it in operation. If he does, you and I are 
going to Menlo Park." 

The prophecy was a true one. On New Year's 
Mr. Edison opened his grounds to the public, the 
railroad ran special trains, and over three thou- 
sand people visited Menlo Park. Here is the en- 
thusiastic letter that Dora wrote next day to 
Maine : 

Newark, N. J. 

Jan. I, 1880 
Dear Father and Mother, 

I have been to Fairyland. The enclosed clip- 
pings will tell you all about it. I saw the king of 
the fairies too — I mean Mr. Edison — and he 



62 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

said, "Good evening, little girl," to me. He 
talked with Uncle John quite a while, and I 
heard all they said. Some one asked Mr. Edison 
when New York would be lighted by electricity 
and he answered, "I'm working night and day, 
but you see I have to produce not only a prac- 
ticable lamp, but a whole system. I haven't 
found the best material for filaments yet, and 
there's not a place in the world where I can buy 
the dynamos (those are machines for making 
the electricity. Uncle John told me) and the 
smaller appliances." 

Then Uncle John said, "Well, Edison, I'm 
waiting patiently till you make electric lights 
cheap enough for me to wire my hotel on the 
Maine coast. Can you make a prediction?" 

"None that's safe," Edison answered. "You 
know the opposition of the gas companies, and 
you know the present high cost of the experi- 
ments. I've spent already over forty thousand 
dollars without returns, and my lamps are cost- 
ing almost two dollars apiece. The public won't 
take them till they can be sold for forty cents or 
less. Moreover, I'm not satisfied with my paper 
carbon lamps. No, there is much work left; but 
I shall work day and night till New York has a 
central station and every appliance we need is 
manufactured at small cost." 

"I suppose eating and sleeping don't bother 
you much just now," some one said. 

"Not very much," answ^ered Edison. "I eat 
w^hen I'm hungry, and I sleep when I have to. 
Four hours a night are enough, for I can go to 



A NEW ERA IN LIGHTING 63 

sleep instantly, and I. always wake up rested." 
Uncle John says that Mr. Edison is the greatest 
inventor the world has known. Just think of 
that! And I have seen him! 

Yours affectionately, 
Dora 

Here are two newspaper clippings that Dora 
enclosed in her letter: 



A NIGHT WITH EDISON 

Menlo Park, N. J. 

Dec. 30, 1879 
All day long and until late this evening, Menlo 
Park has been thronged with visitors coming 
from all directions to see the wonderful ''elec- 
tric light." Nearly every train that stopped 
brought delegations of sightseers till the depot 
was overrun and the narrow plank walk leading 
to the laboratory became alive with people. In 
the laboratory the throngs practically took pos- 
session of everything in their eager curiosity to 
learn all about the great invention. Four new 
street lamps were added last night, making six 
in all, which now give out the horse shoe light 
in the open air. Their superiority to gas is so 
apparent, both in steadiness and beauty of 
illumination, that every one is struck with ad- 
miration. 

IT 

The afternoon trains brought some visitors, 
but in the evening every train set down a couple 



64 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

of score, at least. The visitors never seemed 
to tire of lighting the lamps upon the two main 
tables by simply laying one between the two 
long wires. Most were content to ejaculate 
''Wonderful!" But no amount of explanation 
would persuade one old gentleman that it was 
not an iron wire that was inside the glass tube. 
"It could not be the carbon filament of a piece 
of paper, for," said he, ''I have seen some red 
■ hot, white hot iron wire, only it was not quite 
so bright, but it looked just like that. That's 
no filament !" 

"This is a bad time for sceptics," I said to 
Edison. 

"There are some left," he answered. "They 
die harder than a cat or a snake." 

Dora's New York visit colored all the next five 
years that she worked and waited for college. Her 
interest in the electric light never wavered for an 
instant. Like many another, she marveled at the 
thoroughness of Mr. Edison's search for the right 
sort of filament and followed expectantly reports 
of those men whom he sent around the world in 
search of it. 

She read with a bit of almost personal pride the 
item in the Portland paper that told how, on Sep- 
tember 4, 1882, at three o'clock in the afternoon, 
electric light was supplied for the first time to a 
number of New York customers; and when, in 
1884, that same paper stated that at Brockton, 



A NEW ERA IN LIGHTING 65 

Massachusetts, the first theater ever hghted by 
electricity from a central plant had been thrown 
open, she wrote her uncle: 

''I'm sure you'll have to discharge your lamp 
trimmer pretty soon. But I don't care now, for 
with father's help, I think I can enter Wellesley in 
the fall. Of course I hope to work one more 
summer for you." 

Uncle John answered that letter in person, for 
he needed to go to Maine to make arrangements 
for the summer. 

''I congratulate you, Dora," said he. ''You 
deserve a college course. But I shan't discharge 
you yet. I expect now to wire the hotel by 1889; 
but even if I shouldn't need a lamp trimmer all 
the time till then, I shall always be glad of a cap- 
able waitress. - Will you work for me the next 
three summers?" 

"Of course I will. Uncle John," replied Dora as 
eagerly and gratefully as she had made the same 
reply six years before. "With the money I can 
earn the next three summers, I can lessen college ex- 
penses a good deal." 

So it happened that the ambition of Dora's girl- 
hood,' largely through her own pluck and persis- 
tence, was realized in due season. Still, she always 
felt that Mr. Edison unknowingly had a large share 
in the making of her career; for when in after years 



66 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

she became an instructor in physics at an influential 
school, she could easily trace back her love for her 
subject to her interest in the early experiments 
upon the electric hght. 



THE TRIUMPH OF GOODYEAR 

PART I 

In March, 1852, Lucy Hobart began a six 
months' visit with her grandparents who hved just 
outside Trenton, New Jersey. One morning at the 
breakfast table, Grandfather Hobart, whom most 
people called Lawyer Hobart, said to Lucy, "Little 
girl, a most important case is being tried at the 
court house this week. It may not be very interest- 
ing to a child, but I think that you, as well as Grand- 
mother, ought to attend this morning. I want you 
to be able to say that you have heard the great 
Daniel Webster make a plea." 

"Do you mean Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, 
Grandfather?" inquired Lucy. "I thought," she 
resumed rather timidly, for she feared Grand- 
father might think she was contradicting him, "I 
thought people didn't like him any more." 

"You come from a strong anti-slavery family, 
Lucy, the worst kind," answered Grandfather, 
good-humoredly. "Webster did seem to many 
people to sacrifice his ideal in that seventh of 
March speech two years ago, but he's a keen lawyer 
yet. His health is broken, though, from the crit- 

67 



68 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

icism he has suffered. I don't beheve he will live 
much longer. That's why I think you had better 
go to-day." 

^'I should Hke to ever so much," replied Lucy. 

^^Is it the Goodyear case?" inquired Grand- 
mother. 

'^Yes," replied Grandfather. "It's his case 
against Horace Day, who, I think, has been 
outrageously infringing his patents." 

"It's raining a little," remarked Grandmother. 
"Shall you take us if it keeps on?" 

"If you feel like going. If it hadn't been for Mr. 
Goodyear, you know, you couldn't have gone any- 
way on such a day," Grandfather added. 

"Why couldn't we?" inquired Lucy, after try- 
ing to think it out a few seconds. 

"My stars! Don't you, a Boston girl, know 
about Goodyear and his rubber goods?" 

"I don't believe so," answxred Lucy. "Unless," 
she added after a pause, "you mean the man that 
advertises in the Transcript every night. Ever 
since I could read, I've seen advertisements in the 
paper about rubber that's been heated to two 

hundred and eighty degrees." 

"Yes, Lucy, that's an advertisement of the 
Charles Goodyear I mean. I've kno^\Ti him a good 
many years (he's only a little younger than I, and 
we were both born in New Haven), and he's had a 



THE TRIUMPH OF GOODYEAR 



69 



hard, sad life so far. To be sure, he's reckoned no-w- 
as one of New Haven's prosperous business men; 
but unless he wins this suit, his poverty will come 
back again. Shall I tell you a little about him so 



.■^^ ^/af, 




Birthplace of Charles Goodyear 



that you'll understand some of the references you'll 

be sure to hear at the trial?" 

^^Oh, I wish you would, Grandfather." 
Breakfast was over then; and as Grandmother 

went to the kitchen to give her orders for the day, 

Grandfather said: 

"You and I, Lucy, will sit in front of the fire a 

little while and talk about Mr. Goodyear. But 



70 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

first you'd better go with Grandmother and let her 
give you my galoshes and my rubber cap, and her 
rubber shoes and your own." 

A little girl of to-day, on hearing that request, 
might not know exactly what she had been sent for. 
Rubber goods were too expensive then to be com- 
mon, and "rubber shoes" had not been shortened to 
our "rubbers." The awkward galoshes was just a 
name for high rubber shoes, or overshoes. 

Lucy came back soon, her arms full. The cap 
she placed on a table, and the three pairs of rubber 
shoes she put carefully down to warm in front of 
the fire. 

"It wouldn't have been safe to put my galoshes 
that I had twenty years ago so near the fire," com- 
mented Grandfather, as Lucy drew up her chair 
beside his. "Can you guess what would have hap- 
pened to them?" 

''Would the fire have burned them. Grand- 
father?" 

"Not exactly, but it would have melted them, 
— at least have made them as soft as suet. What 
Goodyear has done is to invent a way of preparing 
rubber or gum elastic so that it can be used in vari- 
ous thicknesses without being stiff as iron in cold 
weather or softening like wax with the heat." 
Then Grandfather interrupted his statements with 
a question: 



THE TRIUMPH OF GOODYEAR 



71 



"Do you know where we get gum elastic, Lucy?'' 

"Let's pretend I don't know anything about 
rubber," answered Lucy judiciously, after a pause. 
"You begin at the beginning. Grandfather." 

Grandfather smiled at the little girl's strategy 
and began at the beginning. 

"Gum elastic is really the dried 
sap of the South American rubber 
tree. To get it, the trees are tapped, 
just as maple trees are tapped here. 
But the rubber sap is yellowish 
white and thick as cream. The 
natives of Brazil long ago discovered 
that this sap, when hardened, would 
keep out water. So they made 
bottles from it and sent the bottles 
to Europe and the United States. 
Finally the Portuguese settlers in 
South America made the hardened 
sap into shoes; and in 1820 I saw in 
Boston the first pair of rubber 
shoes ever brought into the United 
States. They were as clumsy looking as Chinese 
shoes. They were gilded, too, not so much to 
make them beautiful as to keep the rubber from 
melting." 

"Oh, but they must have been handsome," com- 
mented Lucy. "They must have looked just like 




Tapping a Rub- 
ber Tree 



72 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

gold slippers. How much did they cost, Grand- 
father?" 

^'I don't know, Lucy. I'm not sure that they were 
intended to be sold. Two years afterward, though, 
when there were five hundred pairs for sale in Bos- 
ton, the price was pretty high. I paid five dollars 
for mine, I remember. These were not gilded, but 
they were just as thick and unshapely as the 
first ones were. They were better than nothing, 
though, when the weather was not too hot nor too 
cold. 

''During the next few years I suppose there were 
at least a million pairs of rubber shoes brought into 
this country and sold for four or five dollars a pair. 
Then, of course, enterprising New Englanders be- 
gan to think that if people wanted rubber shoes 
so much, there would be a good deal of profit in 
manufacturing them. Then rubber companies 
prospered for a while; but customers soon found 
that the rubber shoes they bought were spoiled by 
heat or cold, and every rubber company went 
rapidly out of existence. 

"It was just about this time that Mr. Goodyear 
sent for me to come to Philadelphia. He was in 
the jail there, I'm sorry to say, but for no fault of 
his, and he needed a lawyer's advice. The hard- 
ware firm he belonged to had failed, owing thirty 
thousand dollars; and though he could in no way be 



THE TRIUMPH OF GOODYEAR 73 

blamed for the disaster, on account of our poor 
debtors' laws he had been sent to prison. In spite 
of his misfortune, he was not downcast. 'It's un- 
fair, Hobart,' he said; 'but there's a way out. 
Look into this kettle. That's gum elastic I've 
been melting. The secret of rubber will pay 
that thirty thousand dollars and give the world 
the most important commercial product of the 
century.' 

"I was glad he was so cheerful, for I couldn't 
give him much encouragement about keeping out 
of prison. Our laws were unfair, just as he said, 
and I knew that his creditors were likely to send 
the poor fellow to prison again and again. And so 
they did for ten long years. But his faith in rubber 
never wavered. Just after he had been released the 
first time, I called on him again. ' Here's the means 
of good fortune, Hobart,' he cried cheerfully; and 
he showed me a mass of rubber he was pressing into 
shape with his wife's roUing-pin." 

''I'm afraid there was always more rubber than 
bread under that roUing pin!" commented Grand- 
mother, just then passing through the room on an 
errand. 

"I'm afraid so," agreed Grandfather. "But, 
Lucy, your grandmother never had much patience 
with Mr. Goodyear's experiments. I remonstrated 
a good many times, myself. ^Goodyear,' said I, 



74 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

when I found him once in a Httle attic room in New 
York, boihng his gum with all sorts of chemicals, 
^ why not give it up? You can't do it without money, 
and nobody believes in rubber now.' 

^'' Don't try to discourage me,' he answered. 'I 
know I shall succeed. What is hidden and unknown 
and cannot be discovered by scientific research 




Natives Drying Rubber 

will most likely be discovered by accident; and it 
will be discovered by the one who applies himself 
most perseveringly to his task.' 

^' No one could dissuade him. He borrowed money 
and made several hundred pairs of handsome rubber 
shoes that, when summer came, melted and smelled 
so bad they had to be buried; he won a prize for 
his beautiful rubber tablecloths and piano covers, 



THE TRIUMPH OF GOODYEAR 75 

but a drop of acid stained and spoiled them. The 
story of these years was disappointment and poverty. 
Once, to pay the house-rent, Mrs. Goodyear had 
to sell the household linen that she herself had 
spun; and many times, if kind friends had not sent 
food and money, the Httle Goodyear children would 
have had nothing to eat. 

''Still, even in those dark days, there were mo- 
ments of rejoicing. Three times Goodyear thought 
he had succeeded: once, when he mixed magnesia 
with the rubber; once, when he boiled the rubber 
in quickhme and water; and once, when he cured 
the surface of his rubber with what chemists call 
nitric acid. Moreover, another experimenter gave 
him a valuable clue. Some one in Massachusetts, 
a man named Hayward, I believe, claimed that in 
a dream, he had been told to use sulphur in rubber- 
curing. He obeyed the dream, patented the proc- 
ess, and sold the patent to Goodyear. After that, 
Goodyear could make thin rubber fabric that could 
withstand both heat and cold. But he wanted to 
cure rubber in masses, not in films." 

''Couldn't he sell the things he made of the thin 
rubber. Grandfather?" 

"Yes, he sold a number of aprons and table- 
cloths and such articles, but they didn't bring him 
much money. They attracted attention to him, 
though, and pretty soon the national post ofhce 



76 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

department gave him an order for one hundred 
and fifty mail bags. Here was his opportunity. He 
was almost sure of success this time, for it was sum- 
mer, and the heat did not seem to affect the rubber 
at all. Still, when the bags were finished, he hung 
them up for hotter weather to test, and took a vaca- 
tion. When he returned, the mail bags were drop- 
ping from their hooks in shapeless, ill-smelling 
lumps. The world said, ^We told you so.' But 
Goodyear said to me after that failure, ^It wasn't 
the curing, Hobart, that ruined those bags. It 
was the coloring matter. That made them de- 
compose.' 

^'This failure only made Goodyear redouble his 
efforts. He moved his family to Woburn, in Massa- 
chusetts, where he had been experimenting, and 
began to work night and day. People who had 
heard of his persistence would come to see him, 
and he would tell them of his discoveries and his 
certain hopes. Finally, one night, when he was talk- 
ing to such a group, quite by accident he dropped 
upon a hot stove a piece of rubber that had been 
mixed with sulphur. To his surprise and delight, 
the rubber did not melt, but charred like leather. 
He had found the secret. And what a simple se- 
cret it was! Rubber could be cured by mixing it 
with sulphur and heating it very hot. 

^^This happened in 1839, when Goodyear was 



THE TRIUMPH OF GOODYEAR 77 

thirty-nine years old. He had practically solved 
his problem; but for nearly two years more no one 
would help him or even believe him. 

''There, Lucy, I've told you the story from the 
beginning. I haven't finished it yet; but I want 
you to have a chance to say a word. Do you 
know what this process of curing rubber is called? 
We tan leather, you know. What do we do to 
rubber?" 

''I don't believe I know, Grandfather." 

''I saw you reading about the Latin gods and 
goddesses yesterday. Who was the god that ham- 
mered and made tools?" 

"Vulcan, wasn't it?" 

''Yes; and we use that word to help name the 
process of curing rubber. Just add the suffix -ize 
and w^hat do you have?" 

"Vul-can-ize," spoke Lucy, slowly. 

"That's it. And now can you tell when rubber 
has been vulcanized?" 

"When it has been treated with sulphur and 
heated very hot." 

"And what were the unsuccessful ways of vul- 
canizing that Goodyear tried?" 

"He used magnesia, quicklime and water, and 
nitric acid." 

"Good. That shows you listened and under- 
stood. Now I'll tell you the rest. It's a sad story. 



78 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

But Goodyear is prosperous now, you know; and 
I think Mr. Webster will bring justice back." 

PART II 

''When Goodyear dropped that piece of rubber 
on the hot stove, he lost no time in putting the new 
process to the test. He nailed the rubber outside 
the kitchen door in the intense cold. In the morn- 
ing he brought it in, holding it up exultantly. It 
was as flexible as when he had put it out the night 
before. Then he cut a square yard of thick rubber, 
treated this new piece with sulphur, and with the 
help of his wife and children cured it in front of his 
bedroom fire. 

^^The experiment was a thorough success; and 
from this piece of rubber he made a cap for himself 
that has never been injured by any heat or cold or 
rain or acid. But the process was far from per- 
fect; and Goodyear saw that the changeful heat of 
an open fire must be replaced by something hotter 
and steadier and something that he could control. 
But how hot must the fire be and how long must 
the heat be applied? Hopefully he set about an- 
swering these questions. 

'^He would toast a lump of rubber over the 
kitchen fire sometimes an hour, sometimes a whole 
day; he would hold rubber against the steaming 
nose of the tea-kettle; he would put a batch of it 



THE TRIUMPH OF GOODYEAR 



79 



into the. oven of the cook stove and bake it, some- 
times two hours, sometimes six. Indeed he would 
often sit up till long past midnight to watch his 
baking pans. 

" Often he begged his friends in a Woburn factory 




Kitchen in which Goodyear made his Experiments 

to lend their oven for his rubber; and they, con- 
sidering his experiments useless but harmless, 
would grant his request. Day after day, however, 
the truth eluded him; and day after day food for 
his family grew scarcer and scarcer. He pawned 
everything he could spare, even his children's 
school books. 

"At last one morning after a heavy snow storm, 
with the secret almost within his grasp, he awoke 



8o THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

to find that there was not one particle of. food in 
his house nor one penny in his purse. Besides, he 
was sicker than most people are when they decide 
to stay in bed till they feel better. But he had a 
wife and four children that must be fed. He got 
up and stumbled through the drifts for nearly five 
miles, so tired and hungry that many times he al- 
most fainted. 

''Luckily, the friend he went to see proved a real 
friend, and lent him money enough to support his 
family and keep on with his experiments during 
those winter days. But though with this assist- 
ance he found out just the details he needed 
to know for vulcanizing the rubber, ill-health 
and poverty, instead of growing less, increased 
with the certainty of his discovery. He was 
constantly troubled with dyspepsia. He was so 
deeply in debt that people had no faith in him. 
They remembered the rubber shoes and the mail 
bags; but they forgot the splendid courage that 
had never accepted defeat. As so often happens, 
Goodyear was a genius without the power of per- 
suasion. He had to wait for his discoveries to be 
his mouthpiece. 

''But his waiting time was his testing time and 
proved his honesty and his single-heartedness. A 
French concern offered to pay for the privilege 
of using his first important discovery — that rub- 



THE TRIUMPH OF GOODYEAR 8 1 

ber cauld be cured by nitric acid — his acid-gas 
treatment, he called it. What a temptation that 
offer was, Lucy, it is impossible to realize; but 
Goodyear was too honest to sell a half truth 
for a truth, and he wrote to France that he was 
alniost in the possession of a greater secret which 
he would gladly sell when he had learned it all. 

'^Just a little money now stood between Good- 
year and assured success ; and the quest for a paltry 
fifty dollars, which would pay his fare to New York 
and provide for his family during his absence, 
took him through the darkest days of his life. 

'^He thought of a friend in Boston who might be 
willing to lend the money. So, having prevailed 
upon a Woburn shop keeper to give his family 
credit for a while, he set out to walk the ten miles 
to Boston on his pitiful errand. But the friend 
(perhaps I ought to call him by another name) 
refused the loan; and, worse luck, while Goodyear 
was still in Boston, he was sent once more to 
prison for those debts so long ago forced upon 
him. His father somehow brought influence to 
bear for a release ; and then Goodyear spent a week 
tramping about Boston streets, inviting this man 
and that to lend him a httle money, sleeping and 
eating the while at a small hotel. But every one 
turned him only a deaf ear ; and when the hotel bill 
came, he had to leave in disgrace. 



82 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

''That night he walked to Cambridge, where, to 
his great rehef, he found shelter with a friend; and 
the next morning, more discouraged than ever be- 
fore, he walked wearily back to Woburn. But a 
greater trouble awaited him at his threshold. His 
little boy, two years old, who had been perfectly 
well when he went away, was dying. His wife was 
sick in bed; the faithless store keeper had refused 
further credit, and the family were literally starv- 
ing. Was there ever a more pitiable case? There 
was just one friend left, and to him Goodyear 
turned. That friend sent seven dollars and a 
reprimand. Moreover, a sympathetic man, hap- 
pening to hear the story in the friend's office, sent 
the Goodyears a barrel of flour. 

" The money and the flour helped, of course, but 
they could not save the little son's life. Still, those 
precious dollars must be spent on the living, not 
the dead; so they carried the little body on a wagon 
to the grave, and the sorrowing father walked be- 
hind. 

"I'm glad to say that this is the darkest part of 
the story. Somebody finally lent Goodyear the 
fifty dollars he wanted; and the inventor went to 
New York, interested the right people, proved to 
a rich brother-in-law that success was in sight, 
and perfected his rubber. 

''When people found that Goodyear had really 



THE TRIUMPH OF GOODYEAR 83 

succeeded with his problem, rubber became even 
more popular than it had been fifteen years before. 
Rubber goods began to be manufactured in large 
quantities; and Goodyear, having patented his 
process, made the profits he deserved. Do I need 
to tell you, Lucy, what the honest man did first 
^with his money?'' 

4 "I don't beheve so, Grandfather. Of course he 
i paid his debts." 

''Indeed he did. And besides, he's been able to 
maintain his family comfortably ever since. But 
Goodyear will never be an enormously rich man. 
He's been wickedly cheated and his patents have 
been infringed again and again. Of course he's 
been fighting for his rights, but the case has been 
dragging on these seven years. His opponent is 
a man named Day, who is trying to prove that, 
although he once promised Goodyear not to manu- 
facture any such articles of rubber as must be com- 
pleted by the use of artificial heat and sulphur, 
that agreement is invalid because Goodyear is not 
the inventor of the process." 

"He couldn't say so, Grandfather, if he knew 
all you have just told me, could he?" 

"It seems perfectly plain to you, Lucy, as it 
seems to me, that only Goodyear is entitled to 
credit for the invention. But I think I have 
shown you that Goodyear hasn't been much of a 



84 



THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 



business man. He's always been so unfortunate 
in protecting his own rights that perhaps there will 

be found some legal flaw 
in his patents. I sincerely 
hope not, but the distin- 
guished Rufus Choate has 
been taking charge of Day's 
claims; and if those claims 
have any force, Choate 
will find it. We shall hear 
this morning only Webster. 
Mr. Choate and his part- 
ner Mr. Cutting, have al- 
Charles Goodyear ready presented their argu- 
ments for Day." 




PART III 

It was only a short drive to the court house, and 
Lucy, with her grandparents, was in her seat 
promptly at ten o'clock. It was the little girl's 
first visit to a court room; and the sight of the 
judges in their gowns and the other solemn-look- 
ing officials was strange to her. But she had eyes 
mostly for two people — Mr. Goodyear and the 
great Webster. She expected to know Webster, 
for she had seen many pictures of him; but on the 
drive over she had asked her grandfather how she 
should recognize Mr. Goodyear. 



THE TRIUMPH OF GOODYEAR 85 

"I'll tell you,' ^ he replied, "what one of Good- 
year's acquaintances once said in answer to a similar 
question : ' If you meet a man who has on an India 
rubber cap, stock, coat, vest, and shoes, and carries 
an India rubber purse without a cent in it, that is 
he.'" 

Though Lucy had been amused at the descrip- 
tion without expecting to profit by it, she now 
pressed her grandfather's arm and asked ex- 
citedly : 

"Is that Mr. Goodyear — that man with the 
rubber cap and the rubber vest?" indicating a tall, 
rather thin, kindly, but keen-eyed man who was 
talking earnestly at the front of the room. 

"Yes, it is. And see, there come Mr. Webster 
and the judges!" 

Silence now settled over the court, and Lucy 
watched and listened eagerly. The formalities of 
opening were quickly over. It was announced that 
the counsel for Mr. Day having spoken pre\dously, 
the court would listen to that for Mr. Goodyear. 

Then slowly and with dignity the great Webster 
stood up to make what proved to be his last speech 
in any court room. To Lucy and to many another 
who looked for the first time upon the mxost elo- 
quent orator of the century, he was a handsome, 
scholarly man, with conviction behind every word. 
Others, however, like Lawyer Hobart, who had 



S6 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

known Webster in the earlier days, before he had 
experienced the humihation of wide-spread pubKc 
distrust and the bitterness of repudiated friend- 
ships, felt that the once sturdy frame had weakened 
and that in the depths of those dark eyes the fire 
of righteous resentment burned less fiercely. But, 
though crushed in spirit, the great man was still 
keen and invincible in intellect ; and the calm vigor 
of his mind that morning immortalized in human 
annals the rugged honesty, the sublime patience of 
the inventor who, despite discouragement, despite 
temptation, never stepped aside from his high pur- 
pose of bestowing a great good upon mankind. 

Mr. Webster made a long speech, during the 
technical parts of which, even though Lucy knew 
that she was listening to the greatest orator in the 
country, her attention wandered in spite of her- 
self. But, young as she was, she appreciated the 
straightforward and convincing argument and 
could follow easily its main points. 

^^ Whatever may be Mr. Goodyear 's claims," 
declared Mr. Webster early in his speech, ^^to the 
great invention now spread out to the ends of the 
earth and known to all the world, this record 
shows, other records show, everybody knows that 
he is a man of inquisitive, ingenious, laborious 
mind." 

Then Webster summarized the history of Good- 



THE TRIUMPH OF GOODYEAR 87 

year's long struggle, referring first to the days when 
India rubber was useless in weather that was either 
very hot or very cold. 

'^I well remember," he asserted, ^'that I had 
some experience in this matter myself. A friend 
in New York sent me a very fine cloak of India 
rubber and a hat of the same material. I did not 
succeed very well with them. I took the cloak one 
day and set it out in the cold. It stood very well 
by itself. I surmounted it with the hat, and many 
persons passing by thought that they saw on the 
porch the farmer of Marshfield." 

Next the speaker reminded his hearers of the 
present improvements in such articles, all due to 
the perseverance of his client, and made a proph- 
ecy which our day is rapidly fulfilling: 

"I look to the time when ships that traverse the 
ocean wiU have India rubber sails, when the sheath- 
ing of ships will be composed of this metallic vege- 
table production. I see, or think I see, thousands of 
other uses to which this extraordinary product is to 
be applied." 

Then with delicate irony the great lawyer at- 
tacked the argument of Mr. Choate. ^^ Those obser- 
vations are all very eloquent and very pathetic, 
but they have one drawback. Nothing is beauti- 
ful that is not true. The invention exists. Every- 
body knows and understands it, and everybody 



88 



THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 



connected in former times with the manufacture 
of India rubber has been astonished and surprised 
at it. 

"If Charles Goodyear did not make this dis- 
covery, who did make it? They do not meet 

Goodyear's claim by set- 
ting up a distinct claim 
of anybody else. They 
attempt to prove that 
he was not the inventor 
by little shreds and 
patches of testimony. 
We want to know the 
name and the habitation 
and the location of this 
man upon the face of 
the globe who invented 
vulcanized rubber, if it be not he who now sits 
before us." 




Daniel Webster 



"Well," queried Grandmother on the drive 
home, "will Goodyear win, I wonder?" 

"It's a peculiar case," returned her husband. 
"Day's in the wrong, I know. But I wish Good- 
year had had the vision of the sulphur himself in- 
stead of paying Hay ward for it." 

"But he paid for Hay ward's patent," objected 
Grandmother. 



THE TRIUMPH OF GOODYEAR 89 

^^Yes, luckily. x\nd Webster never pleaded bet- 
ter. It will come out right, I think." 

''Of course Goodyear will win," decided Lucy 
to herself without knowdng she was prejudiced. 
But aloud she asked, "When will the judge decide, 
Grandfather?" 

"Oh, no one can say," was the reply. "Prob- 
ably not for some weeks, anyway." 

It proved to be six whole months, however, be- 
fore the decision was rendered. Lucy's visit was 
almost at an end when one day in September Grand- 
father came in with the new^spaper. "Well, here's 
good news for Goodyear," he exclaimed. "Hear 
this." And he read aloud the article which con- 
cluded with these words: 

"It is due to Mr. Goodyear to say that I am 
entirely satisfied that he is the original inventor 
of the process of vulcanizing rubber as stated in 
his bill; and that he is entitled not only to the re- 
lief which he asks, but to all the merits and benefits 
of that discovery." 

"I wonder how much money Goodyear had to 
pay for his victory," commented Grandmother. 

"Oh, Webster will make money. Of course 
Goodyear won't have to pay it all, for several rub- 
ber firms united with him against Day to protect 
their own interests. The talk among the lawyers 
when I came away was that Webster would get 



go THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

somewhere in the vicinity of twenty-five thousand 
dollars. I don't believe Goodyear even in these 
last years has made so much as that above his ex- 
penses. But he's generosity itself when he has any- 
thing to give. What do you suppose he's sent to 
Mr. Webster for a present?" 

^^ Oh, I don't know. He's so unpractical that he'd 
give his house away if some one wanted it," an- 
swered Grandmother, whose own good judgment 
could not be denied. 

"I think you're a little severe," answered her 
husband. ^'But you won't be surprised to know 
that he's sent to Marshfield that handsome thor- 
oughbred that he drove Webster to the court house 
with, because Webster admired the animal so 
much." 

^^Just exactly like him!" was the response. 
"He'll probably wish some day he had the money 
that colt would bring." 

Lucy did not go to Trenton again for eight years. 
On her next visit, strangely enough. Grandfather's 
household was again talking of the beloved, un- 
practical dreamer, who by this time had sacrificed 
his life in the interests of humanity. For Mr. 
Goodyear had come to the end of his useful, 
honored, but difficult career. In spite of his trium- 
phant success, his health had been permanently 
broken by hard work and worry, and his last years 



THE TRIUMPH OF GOODYEAR 91 

had not been entirely free from the occasional 
threatenings of poverty. 

Indeed, by an unlucky circumstance, again his 
misfortune but not his fault, he was thrown once 
more for a short time into a debtors' prison when 
he was visiting France on a business trip. But the 
friends who knew him pitied him, trusted him, 
and honored him to the end; and though Lucy 
Hobart is now almost seventy-eight years old 
and has seen most of the prominent Americans 
of the later nineteenth century, she remembers 
no one who worked harder or suffered more for 
the good of humanity than the undaunted Good- 
year who insisted, '^If it is to be done, it must 
be done and it will be done. Somebody will yet 
thank me for it.'' 



THE EASIER WAY OF PRINTING 

PART I 

On the very first day of a Christmas vacation 
about forty years ago Jimmie Granger broke his 
leg coasting. That meant six weeks in bed and no 
more of the wonderful coasting of that winter. 
Jimmie was only twelve years old, and he found it 
hard to lie stiU and be cheerful while the other fel- 
lows were having so much fun. Every day seemed 
a week long until he was allowed to sit up; even 
then each seemed three times as long as usual. 

Jimmie's Uncle Francis was so sorry for his un- 
lucky little nephew that he always brought some- 
thing "to kill time" when he came to spend Sunday 
at Jimmie's home just outside the big city. Two 
weeks after the accident Jimmie received from his 
Uncle Francis the present he liked best of all. It 
was a small printing press, something entirely new 
to Jimmie, who had never seen one before, and never 
had thought very much about how books and news- 
papers are actually made. 

'^If you'll print me every week until you can walk 

again the Home Record, a newspaper page four col- 

92 



THE EASIER WAY OF PRINTING 93 

umns wide and ten inches long, giving the news of 
the house, and of the neighborhood, too, if you Hke, 
I'll give you another double runner, a better sled 
than the old broken one." 

^'Oh, not another double runner! You don't 
want him to break the other leg I" cried Jimmie's 
mother. 

"Of course not; but you don't want him to stop 
coasting, do you?" Uncle Francis asked his sister. 

"N-0-0," replied Jimmie's mother. 

"And we both think he has learned never to take 
the risk he took before, don't we? " 

"Yes," answered Jimmie's mother. 

Jimmie wanted a new double runner more than 
anything else, and so he went right to work on his 
little newspaper. The printing press was not large 
enough to print the paper all at once, and so it was 
printed in parts and these were pasted on a large 
sheet of paper of the size ordered. 

Uncle Francis was specially interested in news- 
papers, because he was editor of a big city daily 
called the Record. Jimmie felt that of course his 
uncle would be very critical and that the little 
Home Record must be just right. The morning 
after he started the paper he had a bright idea: 
he would ask his mother to be head proof reader — 
Jimmie felt pretty shaky about spelHng and punc- 
tuation; and he w^ould ask Tom Frazer, when he 



94 



THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 



came over to see him, if he would not be head re- 
porter and tell him what was happening outside 
— Tom always knew what the fellow^s were doing. 




A Monk Copying Manuscript Books 

He could give Tom the rear sled of his old dou- 
ble runner, which was not broken in the accident. 
Tom had said he should have to have a new sled, 
and that was really a very good one. 

Both assistants seemed glad to serve and the 
work began merrily. When Jimmie's father came 




THE EASIER WAY OF PRINTING 95 

home that night he said he would be the ''printer's 
devil." 

''What's that?" asked Jimmie. 

"Don't believe they have them now," said his 
mother. 

"They don't need so many of them in these days 
of steam perfecting presses as they used to, but 
surely the printer has to have assistants even to- 
day," said his father. " Perhaps now that ma- 

ntt^atibl }6m ftg|^ for gou aHt/ 

The First Printing Looked Like This 

chinery does so much of the work the men do not 
get black and inky enough to be called 'devils.' 
While Jimmie has to lie with that leg fixed as it is 
now, he will want some one to run that press when 
he gets everything ready for the printing. Don't 
you think so, son?" 

Jimmie agreed with his father, as he looked at 
the leg so straight and stiff. 

"I shall be glad to have your help as a — what 
is it they call it — a pressman? I think that I 
shall have something ready to print to-morrow 
night," said Jimmie — and he did. 



96 



THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 



(( 



As Jimmie was the whole newspaper force ex- 
cept the head proof reader, the head reporter, and 
the head pressman, he had both to set the type 
and to write the newspaper himself. Writing com- 
positions Jimmie detested, but writing a newspaper 
he found was not half bad. 

Don't see what you can write about," his father 
said jokingly. "There's nothing doing in 
this house when you have to keep still." 

Jimmie did not, however, suffer from 
any lack of news. In fact, his friends 
brought him so much that the second day 
he started a baseball column and the 
third day a society column. 

The type setting was interesting to 
Jimmie because it was all new to him. 
His type was just like the type in a 
printing office. Each piece was a thin 
bar of metal with a raised letter on the 
end, unless it had a punctuation mark instead of 
the letter, or was blank in order to make proper 
spaces between the words. Each letter of a word 
had to be picked up by itself out of the case of 
type and put in place before the next letter of the 
word could be placed where it belonged. 

It was slow work and it was a little hard at first 
to be spelling a line of words with every letter up- 
side down, but Jimmie found out the very first 




A Type 
Enlarged 



THE EASIER WAY OF PRINTING 97 

thing that it had to be so if the words were to be 
right side up on the printed page. It made Widow 
look Hke this: A\H^^; but it did not take long to 
learn to read the words that way to make sure 
they were right. 

When the type for the first column of the paper 
was in order and securely locked into the form 
which held it, there were two things more to be done 
— inking the type and pressing the paper on it. 
Jimmie did the inking and his father put on the 
paper and took off the impression. The first print- 
ing showed that Jimmie had been too lavish with 
his ink, but the second was so good they put it 
away for his Uncle Francis. 

" Our history says that Benjamin Franklin learned 
the printer's trade. Did he set the type and print 
this way?" Jimmie asked his uncle the first time 
he came out after Jimmie became a printer. 

^'Yes, just that way," answered his uncle. ^^In 
Benjamin Franklin's time and most of the time ever 
since, each letter has had to be picked up by hand 
and put in place. There is a little type-setting 
machine now which is quite a help, but we need 
something better." 

"I don't see how you ever get a daily paper 
ready," exclaimed Jimmie. "It must take millions 
of letters." 

Not so many, I think," repHed his uncle, ''but 



a 



93 



THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 



enough so that it does take a good many girls to 
set the type. There is going to be a great change 
soon, however, because in a short time there is 
going to be an entirely new type-setting machine. 
Mr. Ottman Mergenthaler of Baltimore has been 
working on one for ten years and it is almost ready 
for us. When that is perfected it will be as wonder- 
ful as the big presses though 
it is not a large machine. He 
will call it the linotype (line-of- 
type). It will work somewhat 
like a typewriter. When the 
operator strikes a letter on the 
keyboard that same letter in 
the type will be freed from its 
place in the type case and 
come shding down a path, or 
channel, to take its place in 
the word and line that is being 
set. When this machine is perfected one person 
will be able to do as much as four now can. 

"If Benjamin Frankhn could visit our news- 
paper Oihce at the present time," continued his 
uncle, 'Svhat would astonish him most are the big 
steam cyHnder presses. He never saw anything 
but a hand press of the simplest kind." 

'^Mine is a hand press, isn't it?" asked Jimmie. 
"Yes, a very small hand press. Many of the 




Franklin's Printing 
Press 



THE EASIER WAY OF PRINTING 99 

old hand presses were taller than a man. One that 
Benjamin Frankhn actually used is in the patent 
office in Washington. You'll see it some day prob- 
ably. I think I can describe it so that you can get 
a picture of it. Did you ever see your Grandmother 
Manter's cheese press? No? Do you remember 
the hnen press that your Great-aunt CaroHne has 
for decoration now in her dining room? I don't 
suppose you do. Well, the old hand presses were 
made on the same principle as the cheese and the 
linen presses and the cider press. They stood high 
like the cheese press, and were made of two up- 
right beams with two cross beams between them, 
like a capital H, only there were two cross pieces 
instead of one. The lower cross beam served as 
a support, or table, on which to place the type 
in the page ^form' when ready for printing. 

*^Over the type, after it was inked, was laid the 
paper, slightly dampened; over this was laid a 
blanket. Then a heavy wxight had to be put on 
top the blanket and pressed down hard on the inked 
t3^e in order to make a good print. This weight 
was a large wooden block fastened to the lower end 
of a great wooden screw which extended up through 
the upper cross piece. To turn this screw so that 
the block was pressed hard enough on the blanket 
and the paper to get a good clear print, and then to 
loosen the screw so that the printed sheet could be 



loo THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

taken out and dried was no easy matter. The 
printer must use a long iron bar to turn the screw. 
This he would fit into a hole, or socket, in the screw 
and then, using this handle, turn the screw as far 
as he could." 

'^I know," said Jimmie. "There's a picture of 
that in my history. The poor fellow is just break- 
ing his back to get more of a turn on that screw." 

''Yes, that's it. There were several sockets 
around the head of the screw. The printer would 
turn the screw as far as he could with the bar in 
one socket, and then fit the bar into the next to get 
more of a turn. How I should like to see Franklin 
or Gutenberg or any other famous old-time printer 
examining the new press that will be ready for use 
in the Record office in a month or so. I think he 
would be speechless." 

PART Ti 

The day before his uncle's next visit Jimmie set 
his type to say, ''Much interest is felt in the new Hoe 
press which will be installed in the Record office 
early next month. It is the first of the kind to be 
used by any newspaper in the city and will mark 
a revolution in newspaper printing. This new ^ per- 
fecting press' will make it possible to print 24,000 
eight-page papers an hour — a thing not dreamed 
of a few years ago. People are anxious to see this 



THE EASIER WAY OF PRINTING loi 

fast press printing, cutting, folding, and delivering 
the papers all ready for the newsboys." 

''You really know of somebody who is anxious 
to see the press, do you?" asked his uncle with a 
twinkle in his eye when he read the item in Jimmie's 
paper. 

''Guess I do," said Jimmie. "Honestly, I won't 
be any bother; I won't be any bother; I won't ask 
any questions except about the press — cross my 
heart and hope to die." 

Uncle Francis laughed. He knew Jimmie too 
well to think he would not be any bother, but he 
said, "All right; as soon as you have two good legs 
again I'll invite you to see the new machinery." 

Jimmie's leg mended as fast as the leg of any 
boy should, and he was able in March to take the 
trip to the city. Jimmie's mother went with him. 

" I want to see the big press, too," she explained to 
her brother. 

"I'm glad you came," said Uncle Francis as he 
greeted her. "I should think every man and 
woman in the United States would be interested in 
this new kind of printing press. Do you know, it 
will bring down the price of a paper from a nickel 
to three cents ! They have just begun to print the 
afternoon edition. Shall we go now to see the new 
Hoe rotary perfecting press? It is the most wonder- 
ful thing, in printing that has ever been invented 



I02 



THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 



since Gutenberg invented movable type more than 
four hundred years ago. It seems as though it 
must mark the Hmit in fast printing, but who knows? 




The Earliest Printers at Work 

Surely Gutenberg and Faust would have thought 
our old press with the pages of type on a stationary 
flat bed over which rollers and paper pg^ssed, the 



THE EASIER WAY OF PRINTING 103 

limit of wonders. Come and see this new press eat 
up the paper!" 

They soon stood before a great throbbing 
monster, a mystery of wheels within wheels and of 
gleaming steel. At one end was a huge roll of white 
paper; at the other was an unceasing stream of 
newspapers. Jimmie watched in wide-eyed wonder. 
He heard his uncle say that the huge roll, or web, 
of white paper was being fed into one end of the 
press, was being printed on both sides, the newspa- 
per sheets were being cut apart, folded, and finally 
delivered, counted, at the other end of the press. 
How could it be done ! 

'^Well, what do you think of it all?" asked Uncle 
Francis, turning to Jimmie. 

Jimmie hardly took his fascinated gaze from the 
great whirring monster. 

"It's great! It's a hundred times more wonder- 
ful than I thought it would be ! Now that I Ve seen 
what this press can do I think I shall run one of 
these instead of being an editor." 

His uncle laughed. '^AU right," he said; '^you 
see how this runs, do you?" 

*^Not all of it," admitted Jimmie. 

"Probably the type part bothers you," said his 
uncle, "because you are accustomed to seeing the 
type in a flat steel frame, or chase, as we call it. 
Here it is on the outside of one of those huge 



I04 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

rollers, or cylinders, as we call them. Do you 
see it?" 

^'Yes," said Jimmie, ''but there isn't any type on 
the cylinder just under it." 

''No," answered his uncle, "the other is the im- 
pression cylinder. Those two big cylinders work 
together like the rollers of a clothes wringer. That 
broad ribbon of paper, just as wide as our news- 
paper, goes between the two cylinders as clothes 
pass between the rollers of the wringer. The im- 
pression cylinder rolls the paper hard against the 
inked type cylinder and prints one side of the paper. 
If one of the rollers of a clothes wringer had ink 
marks on it the}^ would be printed on the clothes 
as they went between the rollers, wouldn't they? 
That is the way this press works. Can you see the 
paper as it goes on?" 

"Yes, and there are two more cylinders like the 
other pair!" cried Jimmie. 

"That's right," answered his uncle. "I think 
you can see that when the paper passes between 
the second pair the other side of the paper is printed. 
Just get your eye on the paper as it is unwound 
from that enormous spool, or web, and watch as 
far as you can. The white paper in that web is a 
strip four miles long and as wide as two pages of 
the Record. The type cylinders turn so fast you 
can't see what is on them, but there is enough type 



THE EASIER WAY OF PRINTING 105 

to print four pages of the newspaper on each cyl- 
inder." 

^^Why do they need such a quantity of small 
black rollers?" asked Jimmie's mother. 

^' Those small rollers you are watching are ink- 
ing cylinders/' answered her brother. "They are 
very important in the printing. See them keep 
inking the type cylinder, rolling against the part 
which has just done some printing as it turns around 
to print again. I don't believe you can see the ink 
fountain which covers them with ink so that they 
in turn can cover the type, but it is there, working 
all the time." 

"It is easy enough to see why it is called a rotary 
press," said Mrs. Granger. "Cylinders and cyl- 
inders and cylinders rolling round and round and 
round." 

"Do you see why it is called a perfecting press, 
Jimmie?" asked Uncle Francis. 

"No, I don't believe I do. Do you, mother?" 
he asked. 

"Why, yes, I think so. Look at the other end of 
the press and see those newspapers fairly pouring 
out all cut from the web, folded, and even counted. 
If they are completed in every respect so that there 
is nothing for anybody to do but sell them, I should 
think the press might be called a perfecting 
press." 



io6 



THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 



''Of course," assented Jimmie, "that's the rea- 
son. Why didn't I see it? " 

"Shall we go back to the office now where there 
is less noise and see what to-day's paper says?" 




Curved Stereotype Plate 



asked Uncle Francis after giving Jimmie a good long 
time to watch the press. "There is one thing more 
I should like to have you see, but it is too late for 
you to do so to-day. Give one look at the type cyl- 
inder before you leave. Can you see that the type 
is not in little pieces of one letter each, but is in 
solid pieces of metal curved to fit the cylinder?" 
On the way back to the office Uncle Francis 



THE EASIER WAY OF PRINTING 107 

showed Jimmie a stereotype plate which he could 
study at close range. 

''These plates are what you saw on the type 
cylinder," explained Uncle Francis. ''You shall 
see one made sometime. In these days in the big 
offices after the real type is set letter by letter it 
isn't used for the printing at all. It wears it out 
too fast to print 50,000 newspapers from it each day, 
and besides it takes too much type. Instead of us- 
ing the movable type for the printing, we cover the 
type with a soft substance like soaked up paste- 
board, press it hard on the type, dry it, and have a 
perfect copy of the type except that the letters are 
little hollows instead of raised pieces. 

"This copy, or model, is used for a mold into 
which we pour liquid metal. When this cools we 
have, you see, another copy of the type and in 
this the letters are all raised. The mold is curved 
to fit the cylinders before the molten metal is 
poured in, so that the stereotype plate, as the 
page of fixed type is called, can be clamped tight 
on the big cylinder. It is these big plates that you 
have seen used for t3rpe on the press cylinders." 

"Jingles! but it is some work to print a news- 
paper!" exclaimed Jimmie. 

"Yes, it is, and it is a very wonderful process, 
too, more wonderful every year. You and your 
mother will be interested in this paragraph in to- 



io8 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

day's paper," said his uncle, passing Mrs. Granger 
one of the freshly printed papers. "In that article 
about the new press are some striking compari- 
sons you will enjoy." 

" What a change in printing ! " said Mrs. Granger. 
''Just listen, Jimmie! 'The old flat screw press of 
the colonial period could print fifty small papers 
on one side in an hour ; the Washington compound 
lever hand press in 1829 — the best hand press 
ever made — brought the number up to 250; the 
revolving cylinder press made it possible to print 
about 1000 an hour; then in 1847 the Hoe lightning 
press printed 30,000; and now the Hoe rotary per- 
fecting press prints on both sides, — not a little 
four-page paper, but a large-sized eight-page paper 
— at the rate of 24,000 an hour!' " 

"Jingles!" said Jimmie again, for what can a 
boy say to such figures as those. 

When Jimmie reached home that night he an- 
nounced to his father that he was going to be a 
newspaper man. 

"I'm willing," repHed his father. "The printing 
press has done more for the progress of civilization 
than anything else, and the modern newspaper is 
one of the greatest factors in the world's advance- 
ment. Go ahead. You'll live to see the printing 
press reach even more people than it does now." 

Mr. Granger was right. When Jimmie was no 



no THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

older than his uncle had been on the day that Jim- 
mie first saw a big press, Jimmie did indeed see 
another wonder. It was a Hoe Double Octuple 
Press — the biggest press in the world in 191 2 — 
which, with others built on the same principle even 
if they were smaller, made newspaper printing 
cheap enough so that a sixteen-page paper could 
be sold for one cent. 

The grown-up Jimmie felt as he stood by the new 
press very much as he felt years before. Could 
there be a more wonderful machine? Eight rolls 
of paper were feeding the monster; eighteen plate 
cylinders were revolving, each carrying type enough 
for eight pages of a large newspaper; the cylinders, 
turning at a speed of three hundred revolutions a 
minute, were consuming paper at the rate of 108 
miles of paper six feet wide in an hour. Jimmie, 
then an experienced newspaper man, watched the 
four sets of folders pouring out thirty-two-page 
papers at the rate of 75,000 an hour, until he turned 
away, saying, ''Can it be possible that printing will 
ever be easier? How I wish Benjamin Franklin 
could see this press! How he would glory in its 
possibilities! It is perfectly true that the printing 
press is to literature what the steam engine is to the 
industries, and what the locomotive is to traffic." 



ANNA HOLMAN'S DAGUERREOTYPE 

When Anna Holman was twelve years old she 
had to sit perfectly still for one hundred twenty 
seconds — think of it ! two whole minutes ! — to 
have her picture taken. Now she could have it 
taken in one hundredth of the time at one hun- 
dreth of the cost. 

The only likenesses of people which Anna knew 
about before she was twelve were the pictures in 
the parlor of her home. Two of these were pictures 
of her Grandfather and Grandmother Holman, 
whom she had never seen. These pictures always 
interested her, though for a certain reason she did 
not like them. 

Anna had been told that her grandmother was a 
great beauty in her day, and she often tried to see 
if she could tell how her grandmother had looked. 
This she never felt sure she knew, as the picture 
was only a silhouette. Of all the different kinds of 
pictures that people have had made, the silhouette, 
surely, is the most unsatisfactory. 

These were not uncommon in the days before 
photography was known. They were made by 
using a strong Hght to obtain a clear, black shadow 

III 



112 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

of the profile of the sitter, and then cutting from 
plain black paper as perfect a copy as possible of 
the shadow head. Of course, the sitter was always 
posed for a direct side view in order to get an out- 
line of the features; and, of course, in such a pic- 
ture the expression of the face was wholly lacking. 





Silhouettes of Grandfather and Grandmother 

When Grandmother Holman sat for her silhouette 
and the picture maker had cut out the little black 
shadow which her beautiful head had made, Grand- 
father Holman said, ''It is perfect, Rebecca"; 
and then when Grandfather Holman, in turn, had 
sat for his picture and the picture maker had cut 
a silhouette which showed very little but his straight 
nose and strong chin, Grandmother Holman said: 

''It is just like you, James." 

They knew each other well enough to supply the 



ANNA HOLMAN'S DAGUERREOTYPE 113 

expression which the pictures lacked. In fact they 
v/ere so well pleased with the little black paper 
heads that they had them mounted on white cards 
and framed for the parlor, never dreaming how these 
same silhouettes would some day disappoint a little 
granddaughter who wanted to know how her grand- 
parents had really looked. 

In the same room was a hfe-size oil portrait of 
Anna's great grandfather. This she liked, and she 
felt that she knew just how he had looked. 

^'Why didn't Grandmother Holman have some 
artist paint a picture of her?" Anna asked her 
mother one day. 

*^It cost too much," her mother answered. '*She 
wanted a portrait of your grandfather and he wanted 
a portrait of her ; and I think there never was money 
enough to have a good artist paint them both. I 
wish we were rich enough to have a miniature of 
you painted, Anna. Perhaps we shall be sometime. 
Your Aunt Anna in her last letter says she wishes 
we" would send her a daguerreotype of you for her 
Christmas present. 

"I know very little about these new pictures, 
but they are a wonderful kind which the sun makes. 
I have heard that they are not very expensive, 
and I think that if there were only a chance here 
in town to have the daguerreotype taken we might 
do what she suggests. These pictures, as I under- 



114 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

stand it, are entirely different from anything you 
and I have ever seen : they show the face, the eyes, 
the smile — everything, like a portrait — but there 
are no colors; the pictures are all in black and white." 

Anna had really been wondering, ever since 
she heard of her aunt's wish, why anybody should 
care to have a picture of a girl who had freckles 
and straight yellow hair and blue eyes, instead of 
curly black hair and black eyes. When she heard 
her mother's last words she laughed merrily. 

^^ Would my hair be black in the picture? And 
my eyes, too?" she exclaimed. 

"Yes, I think so," answered her mother with a 
smil'e. 

''How lovely! How I hope I can have my picture 
taken!" 

Later that very day when Anna went down town 
on an errand she saw this notice: 

COMING AUGUST 20 

Prof. Aaron B. Coleman, Artist, 

will open a daguerreotype gallery and furnish 
perfect likenesses of his pairons for $2.00 a picture. 

Abigail Silsbee joined Anna while she was still 
studying the notice. 

" I'm going to have my picture taken! " exclaimed 
Abigail joyfully. ''Mrs. Follen saw some daguer- 
reotypes in Boston when she was there, and she says 
they are splendid. She told mother about them 



ANNA HOLMAN'S DAGUERREOTYPE 115 

yesterday, and mother says I may have one taken. 
Why don't you have your picture taken?" 

^^ Perhaps I shall," answered Anna. "I'll tell 
my father and mother about the notice." 

At supper time when Anna brought up the mat- 
ter of having her picture taken, her father did not 
approve. 

"I do not believe there are any satisfactory 
pictures except oil portraits," he said. "I think it 
would be just a waste of money." 

By that time, however, Anna had become quite 
enthusiastic over daguerreotypes. She had learned 
during the afternoon of three of her friends who were 
going to have their pictures taken. 

"May I have mine taken if I earn the money 
myself?" she asked. 

"Oh, yes, indeed," her father replied, and then 
dismissed the matter, feeling that when she had seen 

a daguerreotype she would have no further interest 

» 

in them. 

It was then two weeks before the artist, as he 
called himself, would come to town. Anna went 
to work at once picking blueberries. The berries 
were plentiful, and Anna's purse held enough money 
for the picture before the two weeks had passed. 
Anna, however, did not go to the picture .gallery the 
first day it was opened. She waited to see Abigail's 
picture. When Abigail fairly danced into the house 



ii6 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

the second afternoon after the artist's arrival, Anria 
was much disappointed at first, because she thought 
Abigail had left the picure at home. 

''See!" cried Abigail, holding up something that 
looked like a httle black wooden book. It was 
about four inches by three and a half and not more 
than half an inch thick. 



Abigail's Daguerreotype 

Abigail unfastened the two tiny brass hooks 
which held the two covers together, and displayed 
the picture inside. Fitted into one of the covers 
and framed by a mat of red velvet was a likeness 
of Abigail which made Anna gasp with surprise. 
There was Abigail's face, Abigail's smile, even the 
sprigs of roses on Abigail's new delaine dress. It 
was not a colored picture, to be sure, but otherwise 
it was just as good a picture as an oil painting, so 
Anna thought. 



ANNA HOLMAN'S DAGUERREOTYPE 117 

Such daguerreotypes as that of Abigail, and the 
ambrotypes and the ferrotypes which were adver- 
tised at almost the same time — so quickly were 
new kinds of pictures invented when once the 
process of photography was discovered — were the 
first portraits made by the camera. Compared with 
the beautiful photographs of to-day, these pic- 
tures taken during the ten years preceding the Civil 
War seem very poor and unsatisfactory; but to 
those who had never seen any likenesses except 
either the oil portraits or the silhouettes, these like- 
nesses made by the camera were very wonderful. 

It is rather surprising that the pictures taken 
when Anna was a child were as good as those still 
in existence show them to have been. It had been 
little more than ten years since Monsieur Daguerre 
had announced to the French Academy his inven- 
tion of photography. Unlike most other inventors 
he actually wished all his discoveries to be made 
public, and as a result, the further discoveries of 
other men greatly hastened the development of 
the art. 

In 1839, when Daguerre announced his discovery, 
he exposed his picture one hour and twelve minutes. 
This, of course, meant that it could not be used for 
portraits until the exposure could be reduced to a 
reasonable length. The use of different chemicals 
from those Daguerre used soon brought the time of 



Ii8 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

exposure to thirty minutes; but one of the news- 
papers of the day says that the portraits taken 
then were ''terrific Ukenesses of the human visage." 

By 1850 such improvements had been made that 
one writer says that in the large cities cameras 
were as common as hand organs, and that the pic- 
tures were no longer ''terrific." The credit for all 
this surely belongs to the far-seeing inventor who 
asked that he might give to the public all that he 
had found out, in order that other men might build 
on his discoveries. 

After seeing three of these new pictures, it was 
no wonder that Anna could hardly wait until the 
next day to go to the photographer's herself. That 
night at bedtime she said to her mother, "I suppose, 
if my hair is going to look black in the picture, I 
could have black curls if you were willing to do up 
my hair on rags." 

"Do you really want me to?" asked her mother, 
hoping Anna would decide against the curls. 

"Of course I don't. I was just joking. I want 
Aunt Anna to have a real picture of me," replied 
Anna. 

The first thing the next morning Anna wanted to 
know when they should go to the photographer's. 

"Right away after dinner I think will be the best 
time," her mother answered. 

Accordingly, as early in the afternoon as possible, 



ANNA HOLMAN'S DAGUERREOTYPE 119 

Anna dressed to have her picture taken. As this 
was back in 1853, Anna wore, although she was 
only twelve years old, a full, ruffled skirt which 
came almost to the tops of her brown gaiter boots. 
The boots were her special pride, and as they were 
the very first she had ever owned with kid vamps and 
cloth tops, she did hope they would show in the pic- 
ture. She wore her best white guimpe, which was 
cut in what was called a half -low neck ; her sprigged 
muslin, which had very large, flowing sleeves; and 
her new white muslin undersleeves, which had been 
a present from Aunt Anna. Her hair was parted in 
the middle and held in place on the sides by a round 
comb. 

''Do I look all right?" Anna asked, turning 
slowly for her mother to inspect her. 

''Yes, I think so, and to me you look very nice," 
her mother answered. "Don't you think you'll, 
need your galoshes? The showers last night have 
left the streets very muddy." 

"I'll wear them, for I m sure I don't want any- 
thing to happen to my beautiful boots," said Anna, 
and so she buckled on a pair of the clumsy rubber 
overshoes which they wore in those days. 

Anna wanted a full length picture; her mother 
said little, but preferred the head and shoulders 
only, as the face then would be so much larger and 
plainer. Finally it was decided to have the little 



I20 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

girl seated in a quaintly carved high-backed chair. 
In those early days of photography Anna must 
keep still two minutes — one hundred and twenty 
seconds — instead of one second, and so it was 
really better to sit than to stand. 

When Anna was seated, she folded her hands, 
and held her head very high. The photographer 
said her position seemed a little stiff, and so he 
turned her head slightly to one side and gave her 
the choice of a stuffed bird or a paper rose to hold 
in her hands. x\nna chose the rose because it was 
pink and matched the roses in her new sprigged 
muslin dress. She forgot that the picture would be 
all black and w^hite anyway. She felt more at ease 
when she had something to hold and was sure she 
could sit as still as a stone for one hundred twenty 
seconds or even twice that. 

The photographer went behind the great, awk- 
ward machine w^hich he called a camera and cov- 
ered up his head and part of the camera, with 
what looked to Anna like a tablecloth. She almost 
laughed, and the photographer, who was looking 
through the camera, told her almost sharply not 
to smile so much because it made her open her 
mouth. 

''Say 'Flip' to make your mouth small and get 
it into shape again," he directed. 

Anna said "Flip," anxious at the same time to 



ANNA HOLMAN'S DAGUERREOTYPE I2l 

try ''Flop" to see if it would make a large mouth. 
It was just as well she did not delay matters just 
then by trying, for only a very little later she ac- 
tually read in the Boston Transcript: "For a small 
mouth 'Flip,' for a large mouth 'Cabbage.' " 

"All ready," said the man at last, after he had 
taken his head from under the shawl several times 
to arrange the folds of Anna's skirt, to turn her 
head a little more, or to straighten her shoulders. 
Then he slipped the plate for the picture into place 
in the camera and said, "Now look pleasant." 

Anna did her best to do so, but her mouth felt 
stiff, and she wanted both to wink and to swallow, 
and, worst of all, her nose itched. It seemed one 
hundred twenty minutes instead of one hundred 
twenty seconds to the little girl, but at last the 
photographer said, "All done." 

In those early days of photography the completed 
picture was the very plate which had been placed 
in the camera. They did not know then how to 
print from the plate as photographers do now, and 
so the plate on which the image was made was de- 
veloped and "fixed" and then mounted under glass 
in such little cases as Abigail's. Only one picture 
could be made at a time, and pictures were con- 
sequently expensive. 

It did not take long, however, to develop a da- 
guerreotype and mount it. Soon Anna was look- 



122 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

ing at her own picture. She thought it very good 
indeed and secretly felt it more elegant than Abi- 
gail's, because she was seated and showed the whole 
figure, and Abigail's was only of head and shoulders. 

^'Good!" said Anna's father when he saw it. ''I 
didn't believe there was much in this new process 
of photography, but there is. Monsieur Daguerre 
and all those who have made improvements on his 
discovery certainly deserve great honor. This is 
really a picture of my little girl. If this is Aunt 
Anna's, then I must have another to keep myself." 

''It really is a good picture of Anna, isn't it?" 
said Mrs. Holman as her husband passed it back 
to her. Then, as she looked again at the picture, 
she laughed merrily. "It is a very good picture of 
the galoshes, too." 

''The galoshes!" exclaimed Anna. 

"The galoshes!" said her father. 

"Didn't I take them off?" asked Anna. 

"It must be that you didn't," replied her mother. 
"Never mind; it must be a very fine picture of 
you yourself or we should have seen the galoshes 
sooner." 

Anna wondered if her Aunt Anna would notice 
the overshoes. The present reached her aunt in 
her far-off western home on Christmas day. 

"I am delighted with the picture," she wrote. 
"It is like having a visit from my dear Httle niece. 



ANNA HOLMAN'S DAGUERREOTYPE 123 

It seems as if she could speak to me if she wished. 
What a lovely dress, and what a lovely guimpe! 
Really, I am so pleased with the picture that I 
even admire the galoshes.' '' 

Anna had many other pictures taken before she 
was grown up, but she said she always felt the mar- 
vel of sitting before a camera for the sun to reflect 
and imprint her features on a plate which she could 
not see. Indeed, the faithfulness and the certainty 
of the result always made her declare that she could 
never have her picture taken without recalling the 
lines which Lucy Larcom wrote after her first da- 
guerreotype was made: 

"Oh, what if thus our evil deeds 
Are mirrored on the sky, 
And every line of our wild lives 
Daguerreotyped on high." 



THE STORY OF THE REAPER 

"What if Cyrus McCormick should be able to 
make his reaper really work and we could cut all 
that wheat by machinery! No more dreadful back- 
aches then in harvest time!" said Ezra Harding, 
as he stood looking out of the back door of a Vir- 
ginia farmhouse one bright morning in June in the 
year 1832. 

He saw nothing of the beauty all around him; 
all he saw was acre upon acre of yellow wheat ready 
to be harvested. How he dreaded the harvesting! 
It meant the hardest work his father ever asked 
him to do. Help was so scarce that even Ezra, the 
youngest of the five Harding boys, though he was 
only fifteen, had to do a man 's work. It made Ezra 
feel almost eighty to think about the back-breaking 
work that was to begin the next morning. 

At that time all the wheat in the world was cut 
by hand, and on that account there was not enough 
raised so that everybody could have white bread. 
In the old world the peasants used chiefly the sickle 
to cut the wheat ; in the new world the farmers pre- 
ferred the scythe and cradle. To harvest wheat 
means both to cut it and to tie the long stalks into 

124 



THE STORY OF THE REAPER 



125 



bundles, or sheaves, for the drying which is neces- 
sary before the wheat kernels are threshed out. Hay 
can be pitched about hit-or-miss, but not so the 
wheat. It must be tied up in an orderly fashion 
so that as it dries it can be gathered into the barns 
without shaking out and losing too many of the 
wheat kernels. 



.r^-'-^ 




Ezra knew his part would be to swing a cradle 
scythe. This was a rather broad scythe with a 
wooden frame attached which was called a cradle. 
This cradle was nothing more than a set of wooden 
fingers parallel with the scythe, which helped to 
lay the cut grain straight in the rows because they 
collected the grain and carried it to the end of the 
stroke. The straighter it fell, the easier it was to 
bundle it. The contrivance w^as clumsy and Ezra 
disliked it very much. However, he was thankful 



•126 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

he did not have to follow the men who mowed the 
grain and do the bundling and tying. That work he 
knew was the most back-breaking of all. 

Ezra was feeling anything but cheerful when he 
saw his father come out of the barn with a smile on 
his face. 

'^ What do you think I heard last night at Lexing- 
ton Court House?" his father asked, coming up 
the path. ''Cyrus McCormick is going to try his 
new reaping machine here in Lexington in Farmer 
Ruff 's wheat field to-day. I want to see the trial. 
We'll all go over, if you boys like." 

Like to go? Indeed they would, and they thought 
of nothing but the possibility of a successful reap- 
ing machine all through breakfast time. 

Late in the season the preceding year Cyrus 
McCormick had created a sensation by cutting six 
acres of oats in an afternoon at Steele's Tavern 
near his home eighteen miles north of the Hardings' 
farm. None of the Hardings had seen that event, 
but they had been deeply interested not only be- 
cause they would welcome a successful reaping 
machine, but also because the young man's father, 
Robert McCormick, was a friend of Mr. Harding, 
and they knew of the repeated trials and failures 
of the father's reaping machine. In fact, Robert 
McCormick had worked for fifteen years on a reaper 
which he had tried for the last time in that same 



THE STORY OF THE REAPER 127 

season of 1831 and then had reluctantly put away 
forever as a failure. 

''I still believe a successful reaping machine is 
possible, but somebody else will have to make it," 
he had said sadly. 

The Har dings knew that the son Cyrus, who 
had worked for years with his father, had not given 
up even then, and, begging his father to leave one 
small patch of grain for him to use for trial, had 
started a new machine on a different principle, 
and late in the season had tried it at home with 
only his own family to watch its working. 

^^It is a success!" they had said one to another, 
but they dared say very little outside because it 
was still far from satisfactory. 

Mr. Harding had learned from the older McCor- 
mick that it had not run smoothly, but that it 
had cut the grain without tangling it and had left 
it on a platform from which the raker could take 
it off in good order for the bundling. To the McCor- 
micks, however, it had been a proof that the machine 
could be made a success, and a few days later, after 
making some changes, Cyrus McCormick had cut 
the six acres of oats at Steele's Tavern in one after- 
noon. It was then too late in the season for other 
demonstrations, and the Hardings had heard noth- 
ing more about the invention until the day before 
the trial at Lexington in Farmer Ruff's field. 



128 



THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 



An hour before the time set for the trial of the 
reaper Ezra Harding and his brothers were at the 
appointed place. They watched the crowd gather. 
There were Negroes, and farm laborers, and some 
owners of farms. Most of the people around Ezra, 
to his surprise, not only seemed to expect the ma- 
chine to fail, but actually hoped it would. He 




The First Type of McCokmick Reaper 

could not understand why until he heard two 
rough, ignorant fellows talk about losing their 
chance to earn their bread if machines could be 
made to do the work of men. 

''We'll smash the things," they said, "before 
we'll have the bread taken out of our mouths by 
any such contraptions." 

Ezra thought it strange they should oppose the 
invention for he knew how anxious his father was 



THE STORY OF THE REAPER 129 

that it should be a success. His father said machin- 
ery meant the possibihty of larger crops, and there- 
fore not less work, but more work and more wealth 
for all. Ezra was puzzling over the strange stupid- 
ity of these men who could not see what larger crops 
would mean, and who seemed to want to go on in 
their old back-breaking toil, at the same pitifully 
small wages, — for the pay of these days was ac- 
tually less than a nickel an hour, — when the ma- 
chine came in view drawn by two horses. Two 
Negroes were leading the horses because the ma- 
chine made such a clattering noise that it fright- 
ened them. About a hundred spectators had 
gathered by that time. The crowd jeered at the 
sight of the strange machine. 

^'It's drunk," they said, and laughed uproar- 
iously at their own wit. 

On it came, turned into the field, and began in 
a short time to cut the wheat. It did not work well. 
The field was rough and hilly, and the heavy, 
cumbersome machine careened like a ship in a gale. 
The crowd ran up and down the field alongside the 
machine, hooting at the top of their voices and call- 
ing the reaper all kinds of names. The Negroes 
were doubled up with laughter at the slewing of 
the unwieldy machine. One man said to another 
with decision, ''Give me the old cradle yet." 

Another said scornfully, ''It's a humbug!' 



I30 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

Farmer Ruff, rough by nature as well as by name, 
ran, too, shouting, ''Stop! Stop! your machine is 
rattling the heads off my wheat!" 

It did look as if the trial would end in complete 
failure. Much as Ezra wished the machine to suc- 
ceed he had no confidence that it was going to, 
and he turned to see if he could read his father's 
thoughts. Just as he turned he saw a fine-looking 
man on horseback ride up to the jeering crowd. It 
was Hon. William Taylor. Taking in the situation 
at a glance he changed everything instantly. 

''Pull down the fence," he ordered, pointing to 
the division fence between his field and that of Far- 
mer Ruff, ''and cross over into my wheat field. I'll 
give you a fair chance to try your machine!" 

This opportunity was eagerly seized by the young 
inventor, and soon he was ready to begin again the 
trial of his precious machine. Mr. Taylor's field was 
smoother and less hilly than that of Farmer Ruff. 
The machine began to cut the grain successfully. 
Once around! Ezra could scarcely credit his eyes. 
Round and round the machine went — cutting, 
cutting, cutting. The heavy clack-clack of the ma- 
chine was sweet music to the little group of those 
who were eager for its success. 

The crowd became quieter as the grain continued 
to fall, and many after an hour or two lost all in- 
terest in watching and went home. For nearly f^vQ 



THE STORY OF THE REAPER 131 

hours the reaper was driven around Mr. Taylor's 
field, and the six acres of wheat were cut in that time 
— the first wheat in the United States to be cut by 
machinery. No wonder the young inventor was 
proud of the accomphshment. His machine had 
done in less than half a day what he knew would 
have required, according to the method generally 
used in Europe, twenty-four peasants with sickles. 

After the trial was over, Mr. Harding and Ezra 
joined the excited little group around the inventor. 

''Your reaper is a success," Ezra heard Robert 
McCormick say to his son, ''and it makes me proud 
to have a son do wha I could not do!" Ezra felt 
Hke throwing his cap and cheering. What a joy 
to have a machine which could do that back-break- 
ing work he had had to do in harvesting the grain! 

That night the machine was hauled to the court 
house square in Lexington. There it was examined 
by a crowd of curious people who had heard of the 
successful trial in the afternoon. One of the men 
who was specially interested in the machine was 
Professor Bradshaw of the Female Academy of 
Lexington, a thoughtful man whose judgment was 
greatly respected in the community. In his usual 
impressive manner he fairly astounded the by- 
standers by the wholly improbable statement, 
"That machine is worth — a — hundred — thou- 
sand — dollars!" 



132 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

^'A hundred thousand dollars!" repeated Mr. 
Harding when the remark was told him the next 
day. ''I think this time Professor Bradshaw is 
wrong. Cyrus McCormick will be disappointed, 
surely, if he expects any such large returns from his 
invention. The great inventors have not become 
very rich men even when the invention, like the 
cotton gin, has caused a revolution in a whole 
industry." 

This was when Cyrus McCormick was twenty- 
three years old. Before he was an old man the 
reaper had proved itself worth more millions than 
the predicted thousands, and Ezra and his father 
had many a laugh over Mr. Harding's criticism of 
Professor Bradshaw. However, at the time the as- 
tounding remark was made, not even the inventor 
himself dreamed of the complete change in methods 
of farming which the reaper would make all over 
the country. Nobody, indeed, could realize that 
within the life time of the inventor it would be 
possible for the farmers of the United States to 
raise enough wheat to feed the whole world. Most 
people, naturally enough, perhaps, felt as did Miss 
Polly Carson when she saw the reaper dragged along 
the road on the way to Farmer Ruff's field. Years 
later when she told the story of that day she said: 

^^I thought it a right smart curious sort of 
thing, but that it wouldn't amount to much," 



THE STORY OF THE REAPER 133 

The successful trial of the reaper was in 1832, 
* when the United States was about fifty years old. For 
the next ten years Cyrus McCormick was preach- 
ing reapers but he did not succeed in selling them. 
They seemed very costly to the farmer; and, more- 
over, they were not the perfect machines we know 
to-day, machines which work as if they had brains 
of their own. Not until 1840 was Cyrus McCor- 
mick successful in selling the reapers, which he made 
himself at his home. Then he sold two machines 
for fifty dollars each. Two years later he sold 
seven for one hundred dollars each. Soon he 
could sell hundreds. 

The West Virginia home was not a good loca- 
tion for making the reapers as it was both difiicult 
and expensive, with the poor railroad facilities of 
the day, to ship the machines to the great West 
where it was already plain that the largest number 
would be used. Accordingly Cyrus McCormick 
moved nearer his best market, establishing him- 
self first in Cincinnati, but two years later, in 1847, 
choosing the very new, very muddy, very unattrac- 
tive little town which has since become the immense 
city of Chicago. History has shown the wisdom of 
his choice. Chicago soon became the greatest 
distributing center of the West, and as the reaper 
was necessary to work successfully the big wheat 
fields, it was no uncommon sight as early as the 



134 



THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 



sixties to see, moving out from Chicago, a whole 
train loaded with nothing but showy bright-red 
reapers. 

During the ten years while Cyrus McCormick 
was strugghng to introduce his reaper, Ezra Hard- 
ing grew to admire more and more the tall, hand- 
some, powerful man who never lost his courage. 
Ezra believed in reapers almost as fully as did Mr. 




McCormick's Reaping Machine 

As advertised in The Working Farmer, 1852. Notice that a man rides 
on the machine to rake off the grain. 

McCormick himself; and when Mr. McCormick 
moved to Chicago, Ezra followed him to help make 
the wonderful machines 

In the years between the first successful trial 
and the time when Ezra went to Chicago so many 
changes had been made in the reaper that Miss 
Polly Carson would hardly have recognized it, had 
she seen it coming down the road. When the ma- 



THE STORY OF THE REAPER 135 

chine was tried in Farmer Ruff's field the grain was 
cut by a cutting bar similar to that on a mowing 
machine, then it was caught by a reel and carried 
to a platform from which it Was raked to be tied in 
bundles. Two men were needed with each machine; 
one walked beside the horses to drive them, the 
other walked beside the platform to rake off the 
wheat for the bundling. Not very long afterward 
Mr. McCormick added seats for both driver and 
raker. One of the next big changes was to take 
off the raker and his seat and put in their place 
an ^'iron man." This was really a long iron finger 
moved by the turning wheels, which did the work 
of the raker, and automatically pushed off the cut 
grain in untied bundles. 

Tying, or binding, the bundles remained for 
years the hardest part of the harvesting. It was 
the custom to tie the sheaves with a crude rope 
made of the grain. This hard, back-breaking 
work required both strength and skill and could be 
endured only by the strongest men. Even Ezra 
Harding said: 

"No genius will ever live who can make a ma- 
chine throw a cord around a bundle of wheat and 
knot that cord securely." 

In this, however, Ezra was wrong, for within 
twenty-five years from the time when the first 
reapers were sold Ezra saw added to the machine 



136 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

two steel arms which, driven by the revolution of 
the wheels, caught each bundle of grain before it 
left the platform on which it was collected, whirled 
a wire tight around it, fastened the two ends to- 
gether with a twist, cut it loose, and tossed it on 
the ground. 

There was then only one complaint made by the 
farmers. When the grain was fed to cattle they were 
often injured by pieces of wire. This trouble was 
remedied later by substituting twine for wire, add- 
ing a very ingenious contrivance for knotting the 
twine, and then the McCormick Reaper and Self- 
Binder might be said to be perfected. 

One man alone, to drive the reaper, could then 
do what, only twenty years before, had required 
twenty men. Moreover, the harvesting of a bushel 
of wheat which required under the slow snip, snip 
of a sickle three hours could be done in ten minutes ! 
Long before Ezra Harding was an old man he saw 
moving out of the Chicago freight yards a train 
loaded with nothing but reapers, carrying these 
machines not only over the United States but even 
to Russia and China. He saw the wheat crop of 
this country doubled and trebled and quadrupled; 
he saw the time when even a poor man could have 
white bread to eat, because the cost of a loaf had 
been cut in two; he saw the reaper bring millions 
and milUions of dollars to its inventor; and he saw 



THE STORY OF THE REAPER 137 

not only this great wealth come to the man he 
himself had long admired, but also, while Cyrus 
McCormick was still in the prime of life, the honor 
and fame which have been denied many of the 
great inventors until after death. 



GRANDMA'S INTRODUCTION TO 
ELECTRIC CARS 

In 1 89 1 when Harriet Lewis wrote just before 
her grandmother's annual visit: 

''We have something in Portland this year that 
really will surprise you, Grandma," all the family 
laughed over her grandmother's answer. 

^'If you mean the electric cars which I have been 
reading about in the Press,^^ so her grandmother's 
letter ran, ''remember that I have already seen 
street cars running up and down hill in San Fran- 
cisco without any horses to draw them, and that it 
won't be any more surprising to see them running 
all alone in Portland, even if it is electricity this 
time which makes them go." 

"Can't astonish Grandma, can we?" said Har- 
riet's father, smiling. 

It certainly was hard to do so. Grandma had 
always been a traveler. She was born in Bath, 
Maine, in the days when Maine was famous for 
its ship building, and Maine sailing vessels went 
all around the world. Her father had been a sea 
captain and Grandma had been to China with him 
before she was eighteen; her husband also had been 

138 



GRANDMA AND ELECTRIC CARS 139 

a sea captain and she had been around the world 
twice with him. Grandma had seen so much and 
was always so interested in what was going on in 
the world that when she went to Portland to visit 
her oldest son the family there used to say jok- 
ingly: 

''We must find something new to show Grandma 
or she won't feel that she has been any^vhere." 

They had all expected Grandma to think it as 
wonderful as they did that electricity could take 
the place of horses, and had expected her to be 
very anxious to see the new cars of which so much 
had been written. Evidently she did not think 
them very much ahead of the cable cars. 

''Don't be disappointed, Harriet," said Mr. 
Lewis to his little ten-year old daughter, who was 
Grandma's namesake. "Wait until Grandma has 
seen the new cars; perhaps then she will think it 
as marvelous as we do that electricty can be har- 
nessed to make these cars slide along the rails. She 
never has believed that electric cars would be a 



success." 



"I remember last year when she was here,'^ 
said Harriet's mother, turning to the little girl's 
father, "how she used to say, 'I don't like horse 
cars on these Maine hills. You ought to have 
cable cars. They are the only proper things for 
hills!' and how you used to say, 'Wait until 



140 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

next year, Mother, and you shall see something 
better than cable cars. ' " 

''She always answered, I recall," added Mr. 
Lewis, ^''John, never in my lifetime or yours will 
electricity be anything but a mystery and a danger. 
It may be used to some extent for lighting, but, 
mark my words, it can never be made to run heav- 
ily loaded cars. It is too absurd to consider.'" 

When Grandma reached Portland, Harriet and 
her father met her at the station, and drove her 
home behind steady old Prince, who had drawn the 
family carriage for years. As they jogged along on 
the way to the house they met an electric car. 

''I really don't see why it should go, but it is 
plain that it does go. If they keep on going for an- 
other twenty-four hours, I am going to have a ride 
in one to-morrow morning," said Grandma. 

''Oh Mother, Mother!" exclaimed the son. 
''You do like to try new things, don't you? Here 
I drove Prince to the station just so that you 
wouldn't have to ride in one of these cars until 
you became used to seeing them slide along driven 
by what you call that dangerous fluid." 

"Well, I'm going to ride once anyway. I've 
always tried all the different ways of getting about 
that I could. Why, I was the very first person 
from our town to ride in a street car in Boston. 
That was way back in 1856 in a little bobbing 



GRANDMA AND ELECTRIC CARS 141 

horse car drawn by two horses harnessed tandem. 
Lots of people then made fun of the little cars, I 
remember. They said the omnibus was better. 
They used to have races between car and omnibus 
sometimes to prove which was better. How the 
passengers on the one ahead would cheer! In the 
spring, when the snow was going off, the omnibus, 
which would still be on runners, w^ould get stuck 
in the mud and the car would win; in the winter, 
if there was drifting snow, the car would get stuck 
and the omnibus would go gliding by with sleigh 
bells ringing and passengers waving their hands. 
Oh, it was quite exciting, but the omnibuses were 
not used a great while after the cars were introduced, 
as the cars were really more comfortable, more con- 
venient, and could make better time." 

Several times during the first day of her visit 
Grandma exclaimed, "I am thankful not to see any 
poor horses straining to draw those cars!" 

Pity for the horses had always interfered with 
Grandma's enjoyment in riding on the horse cars. 
When she and Harriet had been on their accustomed 
rides, Harriet always had taken pains to tell when a 
third horse was added to the usual pair to help 
draw a car up a hill. 

"Now he's on. Grandma," she would say when the 
car stopped at the foot of a hard hill and a boy 
brought up the horse which had been waiting there 



142 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

and hooked the heavy tugs to the whiffletree bar 
so that the third horse could run along beside the 
others, although just outside the rails. "It's a 
big horse," she would often add. 

But even this had not satisfied Grandma. She 
had been in San Francisco when the cable cars 
were first put in use and she believed them the only 
car suitable for a hilly city. 

''You ought to have the cable cars," she had 
said many a time. However, before she had 
watched the electric cars a half day Grandma went 
so far as to say, " If you could be sure there would 
be no danger from electricity and be sure of power 
enough I don't know why these wouldn't do just 
as well as the cable cars." 

''Tell me about the cable cars, won't you, 
Grandma? What makes them go?" asked Harriet, 
now old enough to be interested in the difference 
between the systems. 

"The cable makes them go," answered her grand- 
mother. "It is an endless iron chain which the 
engine at the central station keeps running all the 
time. It travels between the rails in an open chan- 
nel or groove just below ground. The car is carried 
along by being fastened to this cable. What is it 
you call the driver of your new cars — a motor- 
man? The man who drives a cable car is called a 
gripman. It is his business to work the 'grip,' a 



GRANDMA AND ELECTRIC CARS 143 

Stout iron contrivance which must catch hold of the 
cable when the car is to be carried along and must 
be loosened when the car is to be stopped." 

''Is San Francisco the only city where they have 
those cars?" asked Harriet. 

''Oh, no," answered Grandma. ''They have 
them now in several of the other large cities. San 
Francisco was the first city to have them. The 
hills there are so steep that it was out of the ques- 
tion to use horses. Something had to be invented, 
and Andrew S. Hallidie planned this system which 
has been used successfully ever since 1873." 

"Weren't there any people in those days who 
thought the cable cars were dangerous, Mother?" 
asked Harriet's father slyly. 

"Oh, dear me, yes," replied his mother. "The 
gripman himself lost his courage, I remember, on 
one of the very first trips and stopped his car at the 
top of his first steep hill. He got off the car and 
said that, as he had a wife and children, he did not 
think it would be right for him to take the car 
down such a hill. The passengers said it was not 
a case of right or wrong but a case of being scared, 
and they insisted upon his getting on again and 
taking them to their journey's end." 

"There goes another electric car, Grandma!" 
said Harriet who was looking out the window. " It 
goes a good deal faster than a horse car, doesn't it.^" 



144 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

"I should think it did," answered Grandma. 
^'In contrast with travel on horse cars, going as 
fast as that must seem like flying. How can it be 
possible to get power enough to drive a big car 
like that!" 

''it comes right along that overhead wire," an- 
swered Harriet's father. 

^'Oh, yes, I know that from what I have read," 
continued Grandma. ''And it is conducted to 
the car along that long iron rod which runs from 
the overhead wire to the car. What is it you call 
that?" 

''The trolley," said Mr. Lewis. 

"Then what really happens after the electricity 
has reached the car?" 

"This current of electricity runs to those 
cylinders in front of the motorman. Then it 
is where it can be controlled. By the turning 
of a crank the motorman can turn on the power 
to start the motor and drive the car ahead, or he 
can shut it off and make the car stand still. Just 
as steam power turns the wheels of the loco- 
motive, so electric power turns the wheels of 
these cars." 

"It is very mysterious after all," said Grandma. 

"It certainly is," assented her son. "Oliver 
Wendell Holmes says it is like witchcraft. Have 
you read his poem which says: 



GRANDMA AND ELECTRIC CARS 145 

' Since then on many a car you'll see 
A broomstick, plain as plain can be; 

On every stick there's a witch astride — 
The string, you see, to her leg is tied!' " 

Grandma and Harriet laughed. 

" How fast are these cars going? " asked Grandma. 

'^ About ten miles an hour including the stops. 
Probably the rate without stops is about fifteen 
miles," answered Mr. Lewis. 

''There never could be power enough in electric- 
ity to drive the car much faster than that, I sup- 
pose?" said Grandma. 

"Yes, they have already gone considerably 
faster," replied her son. "I was reading only last 
night that back in 1880 when Thomas Edison first 
began his experiments with electricity as a motive 
power on his own private track at Menlo Park, he 
drove his little electric train more than twice as 
fast. In June 1880, Grosvenor Lowry wrote, 'Have 
spent part of a day at Menlo, and all is glorious. 
I have ridden at forty miles an hour on Mr. Edison's 
electric railway — and we ran off the track.'" 

"It is dangerous after all, isn't it?" commented 
Grandma. 

"Most people do not think so. That was when 
they were experimenting and of course accidents 
were bound to happen. In the three years since 
Richmond introduced the system of electric cars 



146 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

more than a hundred other cities have introduced 
it ; and a hundred more are putting it in, I suppose, 
at this present moment." 

''We'll ride to-morrow in one of the new cars, 
Harriet," said Grandma. 

"Goody," said Harriet, "I love to ride in them. 
I'd like to ride on Mr. Edison's own electric rail- 
way and go forty miles an hour." 

"I don't doubt you would, puss," said her father, 
"but I think he is not using that at all now. He 
considers the electric railway a success and he is 
working now on something which his friends say 
will make it possible to run a horseless carriage 
without the help of either rails or a trolley." 

"Oh, surely that never can be, John," said 
Grandma. 

"I don't know. I should have said the same 
thing ten years ago about a horseless street car, I 
think. Edison's friends remind us that first it 
was the horse without the carriage, then it was the 
horse and the carriage, and now they say it is surely 
going to be the carriage without the horse. Wonders 
do not seem to cease; it may come true." 

That night about midnight there was a splinter- 
ing crash which Grandma thought was only a short 
distance from her window^. Something had cer- 
tainly happened in the street, but there was no 
outcry and all was still again in a few minutes after 



GR.\NDMA AND ELECTRIC CARS 147 

the crash. Grandma could not explain it, but it 
did not worry her and she went to sleep again. 

Very early in the morning she was wakened again 
by unusual noises on her side of the house. Going 
to the window she was surprised to see an electric 
car across the gutter, stopped apparently in its 
course by a broken telegraph pole. How had it 
come there? It seemed to have come down the 
track on the hill opposite, and then to have come 
^without any track at all straight across the street 
at the foot of the hill until it crashed into the pole. 
The front of the car was considerably broken. It 
had evidently run into the pole with force enough 
to snap that off short and spoil the front of the car. 

Grandma watched with interest the crew which 
had been sent out to get the injured car back again 
on the track and take it to the car barn before 
most people were stirring. They had a smaller car 
to which they securely fastened the runaway car. 
Then the little service car pulled the runaway out 
of the gutter, across the street, and on to the track 
once more. The last Grandma saw of the wrecked 
car it was at the top of the hill still being pulled 
along by the other car. 

''There's no question of power," said Grandma 
to herself. ''One small car can run along with a 
big car trailing after it as easily as if it were alone. 
There is only one question left in my mind, and that 



148 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

is the question of control of the power. To see 
a big car right across the gutter surely does not 
look as if the power were under control." 

At breakfast Grandma told what she had heard 
and seen. 

"Do you know what made the car run away?" 
she asked her son. 

'^Yes, I went out to the street last night after 
the crash and found out. There was just one man 
out there and he didn't feel very much like talking, 
but he did finally tell me what had happened. The 
man I found was the conductor." 

"^^What had become of the motorman? Was he 
hurt?" asked Mrs. Lewis quickly. 

"Nobody was hurt, and nothing was injured 
except the pole, and the front of the car, and the 
conductor's feelings. It seems that on the last 
trip last evening there was nobody on the car ex- 
cept the conductor and the motorman, and so, 
though it is against the rules, the conductor offered 
to let the motorman get off when they reached his 
home, and to take the car himself up to the end of 
the line and then back a little way to the car barn. 
His own home is close by the barn. AH went well 
until the new driver was reaching the end of the line 
just opposite us. Then the trolley slipped off and 
the car came to a standstill. The conductor stepped 
off to put the trolley back in place, and he easily 



GRANDMA AND ELECTRIC CARS 149 

and quickly swung it back where it belonged, when 
— Great Scott ! — the car sailed off and left him ! 
Went to the end of the rails and then had momen- 
tum enough to roll straight across the street plump 
into the pole." 

''What made it go?" asked Harriet, completely 
mystified. 

Harriet was not the only one of those present who 
was puzzled, and they all listened very carefully 
when Mr. Lewis said, ''Because the conductor for- 
got to shut off the motor when he left the car. As 
there wasn't any power on when he stepped off, 
naturally he felt no need of shutting it off, but, un- 
fortunately for him, there was plenty of power as 
soon as the trolley w^as on again." 

Harriet began to laugh. 

"I see! I see! How easy it was to start a real 
runaway! Nothing to do but to put the trolley on 
when everything was right for the car to go ahead." 

"Exactly," said her father. 

"How surprised that poor conductor must have 
felt," said Grandma. 

"How mortified he must have felt," said Mamma. 

"He must have felt the way I did when I left 
the water running and flooded the bathroom," said 
Harriet sadly. 

"I think he had all those feehngs," said Mr. 
Lewis, "judging from what he said last night." 



I50 THE CENTURY OF INVENTION 

'^Well, it proves there's power enough to run a 
car even without smooth rails, '^ said Grandma. 
'^And perhaps it proves it is well controlled if it 
runs the car straight ahead even when there is no- 
body aboard to drive it." 

''I hope this strange introduction to electric 
cars won't make any difference about your enjoying 
your ride to-day, Mother," said Mr. Lewis. 

''Difference? Why should it? There won't be 
any more conductors taking the place of motor- 
men to-day, I know," said Grandma. 

''Probably not," replied Mr. Lewis, laughing. 

"I'm perfectly satisfied with the way the car be- 
haved," said Grandma. "We'll ride and ride to- 
day, Harriet." 

And ride and ride they surely did. Grandma 
liked the motion and she was interested in all the 
details of running the car, even in how the whistle 
was operated, and how the end of the trolley was 
connected to the car. 

"My introduction to electric cars may have been 
peculiar," said Grandma that night, "but my ac- 
quaintance thus far is entirely satisfactory. I 
really think I know how they are run and I shouldn't 
wonder if I could run one as well as the conductor 
on the car last night." 

"If you let the motorman get off and you run the 
car for him, you won't get off to put the trolley on 



GRANDMA AND ELECTRIC CARS 151 

unless you have shut off the motor, will you, Grand- 
ma?" asked Harriet. 

Everybody laughed to think how the car had 
run awa}^ and left the astonished conductor in the 
road unable to stop it; but Grandma said, "Run- 
aways or no runaways, the electric car is the marvel 
of the age. It does not seem as if the mind of man 
could devise anything more wonderful than this 
harnessing of electricity; but yet it may be that 
Harriet will sometime ride in one of the horseless 
carriages her father spoke of yesterday. If they 
ever do have such things of course they'll be very, 
very dangerous, but I do wish" — and everybody 
knew what Grandma was going to wish — "that I 
could have just one ride in one myself." 



\ 



